This is a success story about the replacement of an outdated video wall which was 15 years old. TIM Italy management entrusted DEXON Systems to integrate DXN5200 to control LED monitor system with ultra-light frame and outstanding signal management.
TIM Italy, Rome, Italy
The number of mobile phone users and the demand for communication services grew rapidly around the world during the last decades. Large industrial sectors have been developed to build and support communication infrastructure serving the rapidly growing end user expectations. The mobile phone operation services have been exponentially growing in Italy and have brought significant changes in the industry.
More and more customers require outstanding services regarding residential or professional communication systems. TIM S.p.A., also operating under the name Telecom Italia, is an Italian telecommunications company headquartered in Rome and Milan, which provides telephony services, mobile services and DSL data services.
It is the largest Italian telecommunications services provider in revenues and subscribers. It was founded in 1994 by the merger of several state-owned telecommunications companies, the most prominent of which was SocietàItaliana per l'EsercizioTelefonicop.A., the former state monopoly telephone operator in Italy. The original core of Telecom Italia included 4 companies: TIMO, Teti, TELVE and SET.
Each of them operated in a specific geographical area. In 1964, these companies merged in one single group under the name of SIP. Telecom Italia was officially created on 27 July 1994, the mobile telephony division was spun off as TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile). Interbusiness, Italy's largest Internet network, was created in the same period. In 2007 the company was bought by Telco, a consortium of Telefónica and several Italian banks.
In late 2013, Telefónica announced its intention to acquire the entirety of Telco by January 2014, potentially becoming Telecom Italia's largest shareholder. In 2013, the total amount of the company's debt was about 26 billion €. In 2015, Telecom Italia Group started a re-branding process of the telephony and mobile businesses under the single TIM brand. At this point, they provided 4G LTE in 6,849 cities.
SIP was a state monopoly from 1964 to 1996 and Italian people had to pay the "Canone Telecom" (a line rental charge of about €120 per year, plus hardware rental and other minor costs) in order to have a phone at home.
On March 31, 2014, Telecom Italia led both the direct fixed access lines market with a 62% share and the mobile postpaid segment with a 45% market share. In the mobile “prepaid” segment Telecom Italia owned a 31.5% market share together with Vodafone. After the merger of Wind and 3 Italia, approved on August 6, 2015, Telecom Italia is now the country's second largest carrier with 30 million customers, followed by Vodafone with 25 million customers. Telecom Italia has preserved its leadership on the direct fixed access lines market and the mobile postpaid segment. Telecom Italia has 66,025 employees today.
The control room of one of TIM offices in Rome was the subject of a significant technological reconstruction, including the replacement of a long operating projector system dating back to the 2000s. In agreement with Sparkle, the company that manages the operational management and applications of TIM AV professionals at A&ITS have performed an excellent renovation work after proposing a true 21st century solution to match nowadays audiovisual criteria from DEXON. A&ITS is a company that has been operating for 10 years on the national territory, specialized in the integration of multimedia audiovisual and security systems.
A glimpse of the LED wall during installation
“We have worked on the restructuring of the entire room in this operating center by designing a LED monitor system with an ultra-slim frame. This is an operation that uses 52 LG monitors - says Gabriele Celli - mounted on a modular structure with dimensions of 16 x 3 meters. All managed in an exemplary way by a DXN5200 controller”.
Gabriele Celli, founder of A&ITS
Entering this control room after the transformation has a certain effect, when the LED wall is turned on, you perceive an impressive sensation of experiencing a majestic and modern operating room. Dozens of operators can take advantage of a video terminal that stands out on the front wall on an area of almost 50 m2, to be used in the most varied ways to ease successful operation daily.
The LED wall appears majestic in the control room of a 48 m2 Video wall
The control and signal management has been entrusted to a well-known and widely used device, the DXN5200, which in addition to the management of the LED wall is notoriously capable of performing various functions, thanks to the ability of processing and displaying multiple analog or digital inputs, SD or HD, local or remote video inputs, 4K inputs, IP cameras and workstation monitor images.
DXN5200 is a product family consisting of 3 different video wall controllers, respectively 16 × 16, 32 × 32, 64 × 64. DXN controllers optimize soft edge blending and, depending on the models, are able to manage up to 8 layers for each output, supporting 4K resolution. In addition, thanks to multi-user management, they offer numerous users the ability to interact simultaneously on different parts of the video wall with Windows 10 graphics, leaving the administrator the freedom to interact directly on the displays with the mouse.
An operation that becomes fundamental in a highly critical control room, where one needs to comprehend a great amount of data on the video wall. This was undoubtedly the ultimate choice to fulfill the project requirements set by TIM prior to the restructuring.
Original Italian Article: Isidoro Ermocida