Representative deployment — an illustrative composite of real deployment patterns.
Situation
A 25-person live production company streams music festivals, corporate keynotes,
and esports events — 30+ shows a year in fields, convention centers, and arenas.
Festival sites had no infrastructure at all; convention centers had circuits
priced like ransom. Twice in one season a single rented circuit browned out during
a headline set, and a client walked.
The old-way cost
- Convention-center circuits: $9,000–$14,000 per event week × 14 events →
~$160,000/year - Greenfield festival sites: temporary microwave or fiber spur, $18,000–$30,000
per site × 6 sites → ~$140,000/year - Two on-air failures in one season → one lost client worth ~$220,000/year
- Status-quo run rate: ~$300,000/year rented, plus reputational bleeding
The solution
One master-control-grade site core plus a smaller secondary kit:
- Peplink Balance 580X
— site core bonding 8× 5G modems + 2× Starlink + the venue circuit when one
exists (eleven possible paths; the venue circuit demoted from “the connection”
to “one more path”) - 2× Starlink Enterprise Kit
for greenfield sites and crowd immunity - 1× Peplink MAX Transit Pro
run-and-gun kit for B-stage and roving streams - SpeedFusion
with per-application steering: program streams smoothed and duplicated; artist/
sponsor/production Wi-Fi tiered behind them
Total investment: ~$34,000 one-time + ~$2,500/yr service + data.
Results
- First festival deployment: case-to-streaming in 22 minutes on a site with
zero infrastructure — 5G ×8 + dual Starlink delivered 1.1 Gbps down / 310 Mbps up
aggregate - 30 events produced in year one; zero on-air connectivity incidents
- Venue-circuit line item eliminated at 11 of 14 indoor events (kept where the
house circuit was cheap — and bonded it as an extra path) - Year-one connectivity spend: ~$52,000 vs ~$300,000 → $248,000 saved (83%)
- Payback: under 3 events
- Sales impact: “connectivity included, bonded, SLA-backed” became a line on every
bid — the company reports it as a differentiator in 4 of its last 5 wins
Pull-quote for site: “The venue quoted us $12k for the week. We plugged their
circuit in as path number eleven and smiled.” — Owner (composite)