Sutro Tower is one of the most recognizable broadcast sites in the world, standing tall at 1811 feet (552 meters) over San Francisco. Sutro Tower Inc, is an infrastructure operator managing the transmission facilities for more than a dozen TV and FM stations in San Francisco Bay Area, USA.

In 2016, the company needed a reliable monitoring software to oversee various connected devices and switches, and then in 2019, in the context of the US TV repack program, needed to renew their system for monitoring and control of the RF infrastructure.

CHALLENGE

The TV repack program triggered a reconfiguration of the entire tower; planning began in 2015, work started in 2019 and was completed early 2020. This project included replacing Sutro Tower's legacy central monitoring and control system with a modern hardware and software solution offering more security for their personnel, more control over the entire infrastructure, and valuable insights regarding mission-critical equipment.

As the trusted host of 15 broadcasters in San Francisco serving an audience of millions, Sutro Tower could not afford down-time and needed precision, reliability, and safety.

SOLUTION

The relationship between CONNECT and Sutro Tower began in 2016 with an early version of KYBIO, called the WorldCast Manager, to monitor some equipment used for broadcasting from the tower, including various environmental devices and sensors (power, etc.). In the context of the US Television repack program in 2019, Sutro Tower turned once again to CONNECT for an expansion and upgrade to the Kybio software. Kybio, a vendor-agnostic, open and centralized Monitoring & Control platform empowering businesses with real-time supervision of even the most complex ecosystems.

For this deployment at Sutro Tower, Kybio manages all aspects of the tower operation, from RF presence on each antenna, to RF line pressure and flow monitoring, their IT infrastructure, main power transfer switches and generator status. It is also monitoring a fleet of new RF Switch Controllers supplied by WorldCast Systems.

For this deployment at Sutro Tower, Kybio manages all aspects of the tower operation, from RF presence on each antenna, to RF line pressure and flow monitoring, their IT infrastructure, main power transfer switches and generator status. It is also monitoring a fleet of new RF Switch Controllers supplied by WorldCast Systems.

“Sutro Tower is a dynamic site, more stations are being integrated as the work progresses, and Connect is an active partner, accomodating changes and revising displays and alert notifications as desired.” - Raul Velez, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Sutro Tower Inc.

Why Kybio as their NMS choice?

Kybio was selected by Sutro over other suppliers for CONNECT's vendor-agnostic philosophy, and the ability to integrate all the various types of equipment and systems Sutro Tower needed. They liked the ease of configuration in integrating the equipment, the flexibility of controlling which equipment changes would create events, and who could receive notifications. They also value the excellent support they receive, from offices in the US and France, with many site visits and ongoing assistance with integrating new stations and systems.

CONNECT completed installation, initial configuration, and training of employees as well as the launch of the platform in December 2016. The TV Repack hardware and software were completed in January 2020, in advance of the channel switchover in April 2020.