More than a million fans have traveled to a Western Asian country to watch a global footballing spectacle. The quadrennial extravaganza will also see the world’s top teams compete for the ultimate glory. Fiercely backed by their respective fans, these teams will compete at the highest sporting stage in the world.

While many fans will be rooting for their favourites physically in the stadiums, most will support their teams from the comforts of their homes or at match screenings. A staggering figure of five billion people around the globe, about five thousand times the number of fans present at the various stadiums, will watch the event live on their screens.

The live scores from the competition will cause euphoria and anguish. Fans will celebrate or mourn the fate of their teams as the tournament progresses to the knockout rounds.

Pushpesh Garikpati, a 35-year-old communication executive at STL, will support Spain in the tournament. Based out of Jamshedpur, Pushpesh has been a fan of the La Furia Roja, or the team with red jerseys, traditionally the nickname of the Spanish national team. Despite his own country, India, being unable to qualify for the tournament, Pushpesh will be watching every game played by the Spanish team in the tournament. “I am so glad that we live in an age where we don’t have to be physically present at major sporting events to witness it,” he said, adding that it was the next best thing after watching the match in the stadium. Pushpesh will not be alone, as most supporters will watch the matches live on screens. This will be courtesy of an infrastructure consisting of optical interconnect products and solutions that will bring these matches, live, on screens across the world.

While players and teams will give their best inside the stadiums, digital networks will be playing an unseen but important role to bring the sporting event to audiences across the globe. It will enable real-time streaming of the matches, and allow people from different countries to celebrate the top moments of the tournament as it happens.

However, such networks require low latency, super agility, and high flexibility to carry trillions of terabytes (TB) of data. This will include live streaming that can’t be delayed by even a nano-second.

Digital networks will also connect the stadiums to fan parks across the Middle East and elsewhere. Live optical transmission will mean that more fans can watch the tournament live.

These optical networks, the digital foundation for the tournament’s success worldwide, will also connect the Host nation’s stadiums to other parts of the world.

A senior executive of STL’s Middle East team said that the company has deployed a range of optical solutions to connect the stadiums with fan parks and other venues at a global tournament. “Our products will make a difference (by bringing live actions to screens).”

While players play their best game on the ground. Optical Networks will play their A-Game underground and aerially! The analogies between Optical products and a sporting team like a football squad are striking. For instance, the micromodule cable can be compared to defenders and goalkeepers, who need to be reliable at the back to win matches. Micromodule cables are high-density optical cables, where optical fibre is arranged in a sheath for transmitting optical data. These make for a reliable backbone of digital networks.

Products like splitter cables, which split a cable signal between two or more devices, can be compared to midfielders, who are required to be hard-working and skillful to be able to influence football matches.

Finally, intelligently bonded ribbon cables like Celesta and bend-insensitive Stellar cables can be equated to strikers or forwards in a football game. Their athleticism and speed are crucial to score goals, which win matches. Like footballing attackers, Celesta and Stellar cables score by fulfilling exponential connectivity requirements and improving network performance and maintenance.

Celesta Ribbon Cables are high-density and innovative ribbon cables that offer a technology leap with a reduced installation time and optimised project cost. Better and smarter than traditional loose tube cables and flat ribbon cables, Celesta Ribbon Cables offer an outstanding solution for demanding, high-growth, high-bandwidth communications applications.

Similarly, Stellar Fibre, a bend-insensitive fibre, is a new industry paradigm that scales data transmission and is used for building new-age, agile communication networks. It not only helps in dense and deep fiberisation but also circumvents all deployment challenges. Bend-insensitive fibres reflect the light otherwise lost due to bends thus minimising data loss.

Powerful optical products are a clear winner in any sporting event. Millions depend on digital networks to tune in live. This endeavor to spread the sporting spirit across the world makes everyone a winner.