 "Photo: Wallace McKelvey")
The future of global communications at the university is perched atop Pearson Hall.
Lonnie Hearn, director of Information Technologies at the university, said the high-definition satellite uplink installed this fall can broadcast signals as far west as Vancouver, British Columbia and as far east as Bulgaria.
It replaces an analog system that was established in 1989, but had become obsolete, Hearn said. The university needed a digital system to sustain an international media presence.
"It was a matter of getting calls from cable and broadcast networks for experts they knew we had at the university," he said. "We had a great deal of difficulty transmitting these people for a live interview under the old system."
Hearn said the university's reputation is impacted by how it presents itself. It is important for professors to participate in the media.
"[The university's] image changes the value of the degree you're going to get," he said. "Maybe it shouldn't, but it does."
Getting professors who are experts in different disciplines to the media outlets could mean driving to Philadelphia or flying to Los Angeles, Hearn said. The alternative is walking across the street to sit down in front of a camera for 10 minutes.
"Millions of eyes will see our expert on televisions around the world," he said.
Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the university, has used the new satellite uplink for interviews with CNBC, Bloomberg News, FoxNews and the BBC in London.
"It's easier to not have to travel into Wilmington to do them," Elson said. "It's better to see UD on the screen than WHYY."
He said the signal would occasionally fail while conducting interviews using the old system.
"The new system is much more dependable than the old," Elson said. "I think it's a vast improvement."
Hearn said the most important improvement of the new satellite uplink is its reliability.
"The truth is we would soon lose the capability to do satellite uplinks at all had we not replaced the [old system] because of the FCC requirements and the level of reliability the networks demand," he said.
The new system transmits a digital signal, which is bounced off the satellite dish and into space to a satellite hovering 23 miles above the earth's equator, Hearn said. The satellite retransmits the signal to a second receiving satellite dish, for instance, the transponder for NBC.
"This one is capable of much more accurate transmission," he said, "which means hitting exactly the right satellite and nothing else."
Hearn said the new satellite dish is capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions that would have shut down the old system.
"It's fun for a techie boy to see a 40,000-foot storm cell come in and wonder if you can shoot [a signal] through that," he said. "We have the power to burn a hole through that storm."
The dish is covered with a Gore-Tex fabric in order to protect it from hail and insulate it from cold weather, Hearn said.
"If it snows or we get an ice storm, there are heaters that blow warm air under the Gore-Tex to keep the heat in and let the moisture out," he said.
Hearn said the new satellite dish and upgrades to the electrical equipment cost the university $200,000.
"We used a good bit that we already had, like the control building and the steel the satellite sits on," he said. "It wasn't like the cost of going back and replacing the whole thing."
The cost to transmit a signal to the satellite is $58 per hour at the lowest acceptable quality for broadcast, Hearn said, approximately one-tenth of the cost for analog transmission.
He said the university has not bought any satellite time.
"The cable and broadcast networks buy space segment, or time on the satellite," Hearn said.
Most networks will buy a window of approximately 10 minutes on the satellite, he said. The university then has to power up their transmitter, connect to the satellite orbiting in space and record the interview.
"It's really interesting to be pulled into the culture of broadcast news," Hearn said. "It's insane. They have 10 different things going on at the same time and 10 minutes to do everything."
In the past, entire classes were conducted via satellite, he said.
"The programs we used to run on satellite, which was pretty expensive, are going to the Internet," Hearn said.
Approximately 240 courses are available on the university's Internet video server. He said Media Services is now able to compress the video so that people can access the courses with only a telephone modem connection.
One class, Peoples and Cultures of Southern Asia (ANTH 210), will be taught simultaneously at the university in Newark and in the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Patricia Sloane-White said the class will meet Monday nights in Delaware and Tuesday mornings in Malaysia using the university's videoconferencing service.
"I have always dreamt of the possibility of teaching a course like this, with two groups of students in two parts of the world at once," Sloane-White said.
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our feed
Contact us through email
Be the first to comment on this article!