Berlin International Film Festival Picks Colt to Enable Critical Connectivity

Colt Technology Services, the digital infrastructure company, has announced that the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival – the Berlinale – is using its international fibre optic network and on-demand service for the first time for the delivery of film contributions from Asia, via a hub in Singapore.

This enables film producers from the APAC region to transfer their work to Berlin faster and more securely. The service supports Berlinale’s strategy to make it as easy as possible to upload contributions from around the world, especially where stable bandwidth capacity is a challenge.

The digital infrastructure integrates Colt’s existing High Bandwidth Service, a direct line between Berlinale servers and the DE-CIX central Internet hub in Frankfurt, which studios around the world use for uploads.

Filmmakers from the APAC region upload their work via the Internet to a server at the partner data centre in Singapore. From there, Colt establishes an end-to-end on-demand connection via Ethernet between the data centre and the Colt node in Berlin, where the Berlinale’s film servers are located.

For this purpose, the Berlinale cinema technology team commissions a DC Cross Connect in the data centre in Singapore via Colt’s on-demand portal, which connects the server with the Colt end device. The Berlinale uses the “Bandwidth Boost” function to transfer the data. This allows the bandwidth capacity to be flexibly scaled between 10 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s according to demand. Data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s are possible with the “Boost” option.

“It is important to us to make delivery as easy as possible for film producers and to create a level playing field. Producers have more time to film, and we have more flexibility to respond to potential film file issues. As a global provider of digital infrastructure, Colt is the ideal partner because we want to make the service possible uniformly worldwide,” explains Ove Sander, Technical Director Digital Cinema at the Berlinale.

The new application of Colt’s On-Demand digital infrastructure demonstrates Colt’s strategy to use its expertise, global partner network and intelligent network services to enable its customers to expand their business model further. Among other advantages, they benefit from flexible, scalable on-demand connections, as well as Colt’s global network presence, which offers a consistently high quality of service, especially to companies with international operations.

Keri Gilder, Chief Executive Officer, Colt Technology Services, said, “We have a special partnership with the Berlinale, one of the world’s finest film festivals and a true digital pioneer. We’re very proud to have played a strong supporting role in bringing digital cinema to life at the festival over the past fifteen years. This year is a celebration of global talent as filmmakers from across Asia showcase their diversity and creativity to a wider audience using our On Demand network capabilities. It’s a perfect example of technology innovation connecting the world for good.”

As the Official Digital Cinema Partner of the Berlinale for 15 years, Colt has provided network services with high bandwidths of up to 10 Gbit/s and Internet access to enable the transmission and distribution of film data from Colt’s network node in Berlin to the 20 venues with 47 screens in the highest quality. By connecting to Colt’s on-demand portal, Berlinale can also increase or decrease the bandwidth of individual connections itself in near real-time. In addition to the technological advancement of digital cinema, Colt is also driving innovations in its own fibre network at the Berlinale, such as – most recently – quantum-based encryption.

Colt has a special connection to the Berlinale and the capital itself: Colt has laid around 1,900 kilometres of fibre in Berlin and Potsdam. A total of around 2,600 company buildings are connected. Colt also supports the gigabit strategy of the state of Berlin and will connect a further 350 commercial customers by 2025. Colt is also working with the Berlin Broadband Portal, a Berlin Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy and Operations initiative through which companies can register their bandwidth requirements. Berlin also plays an important role in Colt’s network expansion into Eastern Europe. The German capital is part of a network ring that includes Warsaw, Krakow, Brno, Prague and Dresden.