Live Streaming Events Businesses – the Future of the Events Industry
An audio-visual hire company that adds live streaming to its services meets a problem the AV side never had: venues rarely offer an internet connection you can trust with a paying client’s broadcast, and one saturated line ruins the job in front of the audience.
Speedify is software that pools every internet connection a crew can reach (venue Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, Starlink) into a single upload path, so no single connection can take the stream down. That needs two or more internet connections; on a single connection Speedify works as an encrypted VPN and cannot stop that connection from dropping.
Martin Burden of AudioHire UK explains the challenges his crews hit and what changed once they streamed over Speedify; Speedify can work through the same ground with your events business.
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How Speedify combines internet connections on any hardware
Get started with Speedify for your business
Speedify offers three commercial paths. They work together, and most enterprise customers use two or more.
01
Speedify Teams
Speedify on every supported OS for every team member
Centralized dashboard for billing, user provisioning, and usage analytics
CSV import/export and a RESTful management API
02
Speedify for Routers
License for supported OpenWrt routers
Powered by Speedify hardware lineup ready to deploy out of the box
Miri, GL.iNet and other partner models
Covers every device on the network, with no per-device install
03
Embed Speedify into your product
A · DIY
Build it yourself with the Speedify SDK.
Integrate Speedify into your iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux or QNX product. Full developer documentation, sample code and supported integration paths. Your team owns the build, and the Speedify SDK handles combining the internet connections.
B · CUSTOM ENGINEERING
Have the Speedify team build it for you.
The Context
As a company, AudioHire started in one form or another in about 1992. They were originally a rock and roll type hire company, where they did microphones for recording studios, recording equipment and instruments.
In 2014, Martin Burden took it over and turned it into more of a corporate AV company, doing more events. When the pandemic hit, AudioHire had a really busy period coming up; March, April, May 2020 were supposed to be busy. Martin had to think pretty quickly because the company was gonna face liquidation otherwise.
“So I’ve been working with other people doing video streaming and I saw lots of people kept talking about virtual events. The way out I saw was to invest whatever I had, any personal money and any money I could get out of the company.”, says Martin Burden. He bought camera equipment, extra computers, streaming gear and then spent a few months testing and learning the new live streaming skills.
Challenges for Live Streaming Events Businesses
Reliable internet is what makes or breaks a live stream. Many corporate venues have very good internet connections, because large IT teams have spent years building those networks.
But when it comes to remote places, things dramatically change. In the middle of nowhere there’s no electricity and there’s no Internet.
Solutions for Reliable Internet for Live Streaming Events
Martin had been trying out different 4G routers, which had been okay if you were able to find a good place in the middle of London. That’s because you usually don’t have a problem with 4G cellular signal there. But, as he mentions, it’s trial and error: sometimes one router will work on different accounts.
Next he considered cellular bonding routers. “But I’ve sort of seen limitations in those. And not only that with the limitations, but paying a thousand quid for this box that you could only put two dongles in…”
Speedify was suggested to him in a group on Facebook. So he gave it a go. He hooked up all his available connections to his MacBook Pro and…
The Result: Successful Live Streams of Events
Martin uses a MacBook Pro with a few connections, depending on the location:
- wired Ethernet
- USB 4G cellular dongle
- Wi-Fi router connected via USB-to-Ethernet
- tethered smartphone
The first impression was very exciting: the Internet was faster than the home broadband.
“The failover I found on the Speedify is great. I tried when I was experimenting with it. I tried all sorts of different things: I would do a test stream and I’d do things like pulling plugs out just to see if it would fail. Just trying to make it fail. I’ve never got total failure from it, I’ve managed to get it to sort of slow down a little bit so that it sort of buffered once, but that was literally like a second. And I’ve tried my hardest to break it, I’ve really tried to make it not work because you want to be prepared for anything that could fail. And I can’t make it not work!”, says Martin Burden of AudioHire.
He also added: “You’ve got something as powerful as any of those gadgets that cost like thousands of pounds. At the moment Audiohire skinned – we’re trying to make some money trying to survive and Speedify has just made that possible. It’s given that peace of mind to be able to handle things like remote celebrations, remote speeches, anything where there’s no Internet.”
Speedify Is Used on Millions of Devices Worldwide
Speedify has made internet connections faster and more reliable for businesses and individuals since 2014.
15M+
Speedify downloads worldwide75K+
5-star reviews for Speedify on iOS and Android82
Speedify server points of presence in 50+ cities on 6 continents500TB+
Of internet traffic carried by Speedify every weekSpeedify Partners
Speedify works with these companies to bring faster, more reliable internet and networking technology to their customers and employees.
How Speedify Helps a Live Streaming Events Business
When your internet connection gives you trouble, try using all your available connections simultaneously. Along with the venue’s internet, you almost certainly have a smartphone with a 4G/5G cellular plan. Together they give you faster, more reliable internet, one of the essential ingredients for a live streaming events business.
With only one connection, Speedify works as an encrypted VPN and cannot stop that connection from dropping. Speedify can still minimize packet loss on wireless networks by resending lost packets and using error correction.
Speedify Business Solutions
Speedify Teams
Speedify for Routers
Speedify Embedded Solutions and Integrations
Add Speedify to your own app or hardware with the Speedify SDK. Your product then combines internet connections, fails over automatically when one drops, and encrypts the traffic, using the same technology as the Speedify app.