Vancouver, CANADA, October 1, 2020 – West Carolina Tel, a trusted telecommunications provider, has partnered with WISI, a global leader in carrier-grade video delivery solutions, to launch a next-generation video solution to address the needs of its Covid-19 affected customers in a non-traditional, but much-needed way.

This spring, the virus adversely impacted high school seniors and their expected graduation ceremonies, and West Carolina Tel recognized a chance to help ensure the health and safety of the communities it serves in northwestern South Carolina. It streamed local high school graduation ceremonies in real-time, allowing friends and families of high school seniors to enjoy the events from their homes, without potential exposure to the virus. 

Engineers from both West Carolina Tel and WISI worked together to launch the streaming service very quickly, with WISI providing critical software at no charge.

The solution makes use of WISI’s HLS streaming capability, as well as a new open-source video transport protocol, known as Secure Reliable Transport (SRT).  SRT allows broadcast-quality video to be transported from remote locations over unmanaged internet connections.

“The WISI solution was so efficient and so reliable, there was no need to look any further,” said Jeff Robinson, Director of Engineering for West Carolina Tel.

A special website for the ceremonies was established by West Carolina Tel, and subscribers could log on during the ceremony from their homes, eliminating the health risk of attending in person.   Videographers at the graduation ceremonies streamed HD IP video with SRT encoding to West Carolina’s headend.  WISI’s Inca IP Video Platform then decoded the SRT streams, and WISI provided the necessary Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR) transcoding and HLS streaming software for the new website, at no charge. 

“Our guys were pretty impressed because working with WISI, we had the whole thing up and running in about two hours,” said Robinson.  “WISI’s engineer in Canada could actually see what we were broadcasting, to make sure everything was OK.”

West Carolina Tel also utilizes WISI’s award-winning VidiOS ™ management and monitoring tools.  Features include inbound and outbound video thumbnails, stream sample downloads, extensive statistical analysis, and end-to-end process logging. “Our techs really like it.  They find it much more user-friendly that what we previously had,” said Robinson.

All of WISI’s video platforms now support SRT, and this new technology promises to make video transport much more economical and reliable for its customers.

“West Carolina Tel has always been a great customer of ours, and we are proud to help provide a service that their local communities really needed and appreciated,” said Mike Skowronski, VP of Sales for WISI America.

To learn more about the Inca IP Video Platform, SRT, and VidiOS™, please visit www.wisi.tv.