South African mobile communications company, Vodacom will be demonstrating first Africa 5G use case of a live sport broadcast in Virtual Reality at this year’s Vodacom Durban.
The first VR experience will showcase the high speed and low latency capabilities of 5G and will use 4K video cameras to record and stream live, immersive footage from two different positions at the Greyville racecourse where the annual Vodacom Durban July horserace will take place on Saturday.
Vodacom will partner with Nokia to showcase the future of VR through two different 5G-powered experiences at Africa’s greatest horse-racing event.
Each of these cameras will broadcast a live, 360-degree feed over 5G back to the Vodacom hospitality suite, where guests can experience the feeds from the racecourse through VR headsets, and be virtually transported into the live scenes from the day’s races.
A second 5G-enabled related VR experience will also be demonstrated in the form of a VR penalty shootout, where high speeds and super-low latency are both critical to the reality of the experience
“Our future will be characterised by a range of new technologies that are fusing our physical and digital worlds. Robotics and super-realistic virtual & augmented reality are characteristic of this era,” said Andries Delport, Chief Technology Officer at Vodacom.
“These new technologies require the high speed and low latency that only a 5G network can deliver.”
This year’s Vodacom Durban July will showcase the future of mobile networks.
Vodacom’s 5G VR showcases at the Vodacom Durban July illustrate the opportunities and use cases which could be made available through a 5G network.
In addition to the 5G showcases, Vodacom has 12 base stations at the Greyville Racecourse, with a combination of ten permanent and two temporary base stations to cope with the crowds on the day, which are expected to exceed 50 000 visitors.
The base stations have also been enabled with the latest 4G+ technologies to increase network capacity and speed.
To guarantee optimal network user experience, all the base stations serving King Shaka International Airport, all road routes to Greyville and the broader eThekwini area have been upgraded and optimised for maximum performance.