NETIA in Africa

RTM (Radiodiffusion Télévision Marocaine) has chosen Radio-Assist 7 for digitising its sites. In November, Mosaique FM, Tunisia's first private radio station, selected NETIA to equip its studios. NETIA's rigorous approach in meeting each customers exact requirements partly explains this success.

RTM has several sites throughout the country. A complete digital system has to be installed at each of them (Casablanca, Fez, Layoune, Tetouan, Dakha, etc.). Networked around one or more servers, each system contains a number of automatic or manual acquisition stations, several production stations with highly ergonomic editing tools, scheduling and broadcast stations which interface ergonomically with the console in place. Priority goes to the news rooms which have really innovating production, processing and scheduling tools to work with. For items the radio wants to keep, there is an automatic CD-ROM archiving module. The recorded and indexed CDs can be accessed from any workstation on the network, so items that have been saved and deleted from the server can be quickly restored to the Radio-Assist database.

Mosaique FM was launched on 7th November 2003, the 16th anniversary of the date President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali came to power. To celebrate the occasion the President announced that Tunisian radio and television was henceforth open to private enterprise. With a complete Radio-Assist 7 system, Mosaique FM also focuses on internet broadcast, both live and recorded. NETIA's StreamIn is tailored for this requirement: in live mode, the process is fully automatic, and in recorded mode (on demand), the technician selects the items to broadcast with a click of the mouse.

Over several years, NETIA has formalised a rigorous approach which is adapted to each new installation. Three stages are defined in discussion with the client: project management, implementation plan and deployment. Two project coordinators are appointed for project management, one by the client and the other by NETIA. The implementation plan is vital: it spans the period from start-up to project finalisation. It consists of a regularly updated document which shows how the project is progressing and what decisions are made as it advances. Once all the preparations have been made for deployment, the process can start. As NETIA systems already installed have shown, the Radio-Assist 7 modular approach offers a great many deployment options. Radio stations always wish to reduce as far as possible the length of time analogue and digital technologies run side by side. The best way has to be found to deal with all the problems and get the system right before the majority of the users are on line.

Since 1997, when the first MEDI 1 system was installed in Morocco, NETIA has signed a number of contracts which have confirmed its reputation in North Africa for seriousness and reliability.