On July 9, an estimated 3.6 billion people will congregate in pubs, beer gardens and town squares dotted across the planet to watch the televised broadcast of the World Cup final. If the Fifa numbers are correct, that’s more than half the world’s population, which for some will be an unnerving turnout. Should a technical glitch of any sort, God forbid, halt even a second of the transmission, countless television sets will no doubt be subjected to a withering barrage of abuse. Poor televisions. They don’t deserve such venom.

If you want to hurl invective at somebody, his name is Walter Zornek. Mr Zornek is a pleasant German, thoughtful and precise, a true expert in fibre transmission technologies. An IT engineer by training, he works for the media and broadcast division of T-Systems Business Services, the Deutsche Telekom unit that is charged, along with Swiss broadcast specialists HBS, with ensuring that the live signals from each of the dozen German stadiums reaches the world’s bars, businesses and homes uninterrupted.

On a recent tour of Fifa’s 30,000-square-metre International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Munich, Mr Zornek told me about the plan T-Systems, a Fifa technology and telecoms partner, has devised for keeping some three billion soccer fans happy. It begins with a massive fibre network linking the dozen stadiums around the country with the world’s broadcasters situated in the IBC, the nerve centre that will act as the relay point to send match broadcast signals simultaneously to 213 countries.

The fibre network is an engineering feat capable of beaming data, voice, still pictures, an analogue TV signal and, for the first time at a World Cup, a high-definition TV signal at a blazingly fast 20 gigabits-per-second clip. Another 23 satellite dishes will receive and beam signals as well from the IBC, but for an engineer like Zornek, the real hero is the fibre network, hailed as the most powerful live television broadcast network ever constructed. The network has the capacity to beam 50 separate broadcast, data and voice signals simultaneously from Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the site of the championship match. In the old days you’d need dozens of satellites for such fire power.

Signal capacity is particularly important in today’s broadcast environment. In the simpler analogue terrestrial days, a few TV signal feeds would work fine – one primary signal, and a few redundant signals in case something happens to the first. The 1990 final match between West Germany and Argentina, for example, had a transmission capacity of five signals, and 2.2 million people viewed that one without a hitch – unless you were supporting Argentina, who lost 1-0. In 1990, there was one place to view the game: TV. This year, broadcasters will also be sending separate live transmissions over fixed data lines to Europe, Japan and Brazil, so that fans can view them on a variety of devices from mobile phones to high-definition TV sets.

Never before has fibre played such a role in a live televised event, says Mr Zornek, the vice president and executive project manager for T-Systems’ World Cup efforts. He adds that for the first time, about half the broadcast transmissions will be carried over fibre-optic lines. Previously, they were carried exclusively by satellites. For many European fans this means the live match signal will come from a cable, not the sky. "We have fixed fibre lines to London, Paris, Madrid and Milan, to all the major cities in Europe’s big soccer countries, to provide live TV transmissions," he says.

Mr Zornek and his crew believe that the emergence of fibre during the month-long tournament will change the broadcasting television model forever. It’s a cheaper broadcast technology (perhaps ten times cheaper than satellite, he says), particularly if you want to send the signal to digital devices such as mobile phones, lap tops and HD TVs.

"We are witnessing the technology and the market combining to create a revolutionary change in the very saturated and old-fashioned broadcast business," Mr Zornek says. This is a familiar proclamation by telecoms companies who are looking to muscle in on the lucrative broadcast TV business.

Mr Zornek’s prediction? "This will be the fibre World Cup," he says emphatically. What effect this might have on the pitch is anybody’s guess. But the signal will get through, he vows.

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