BTS Comeback Concert Mobilizes Cloud, Mapping, Telecom Technologies

BTS will hold their first complete-group comeback show in three years and nine months at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul today (June 21). With 260,000 attendees expected and 3 billion viewers worldwide, IT companies are showcasing their cloud, telecommunications, and spatial information technologies.

According to Netflix, "BTS Comeback Live: Arirang" will be broadcast simultaneously to 190 countries. This marks Netflix's first live broadcast in the Korean market. At a pre-event briefing held at Cinecube Gwanghwamun on June 20, Brandon Riegg, Netflix Vice President of Nonfiction Series and Sports, said, "There could be no bigger moment than this," adding, "It is a special privilege to be part of this at the historic Gwanghwamun."

Netflix has installed a stage measuring 14.7 meters high and 17 meters wide, with cameras positioned as far as 1.6 kilometers away on rooftops.

Netflix has spent three years building its own live streaming infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. Unlike video-on-demand services that pre-distribute content to global servers, live streaming requires real-time collection and encoding of video signals for simultaneous transmission to hundreds of millions of devices.

AWS has established a system for seamless signal delivery. Video signals from the venue pass through a broadcast operations center to AWS cloud, where they are received simultaneously via four independent network paths across two geographically distributed AWS Regions. The industry-standard SMPTE 2022-7 protocol enables instant switching to alternate paths if one fails, without viewers noticing any disruption.

The received signals undergo real-time encoding on AWS cloud infrastructure and are converted to various quality levels. Optimal quality from SD to UHD is automatically selected based on viewers' internet speed and device performance, with multilingual audio and subtitles added simultaneously.

Global simultaneous broadcast is handled through Netflix's proprietary content delivery network, Open Connect. Content is transmitted via more than 18,000 servers deployed across over 6,000 locations worldwide, with videos delivered from the server geographically closest to each viewer.

AWS has also established real-time monitoring capabilities handling up to 38 million requests per second. Capacity has been pre-allocated and set for automatic scaling to handle traffic surges at showtime.

An AWS spokesperson said, "This BTS concert is a technological milestone where content originating from Korea is delivered globally in real-time through global cloud infrastructure," adding, "Korea is an important market for validating live streaming technology quality, given its world-class internet infrastructure and digital content consumption environment."

AWS is not alone in using the BTS comeback show to validate and advance its technology. Kakao's location-based platform KakaoMap is providing ultra-precise bus location information for approximately 420 Seoul city bus routes for one week starting June 16. This service results from approximately two years of collaboration between KakaoMap and the Seoul Metropolitan Government's Future Advanced Transportation Division to build ultra-precise bus data production and verification systems. KakaoMap and Seoul plan to evaluate official implementation in the second half of the year following this pilot.

The pilot features shortened location data transmission intervals, enabling more accurate tracking of actual vehicle routes. This allows users to verify exact bus locations even when schedules change frequently due to long dispatch intervals, traffic congestion, road closures, or route diversions.

Lee Chang-min, Leader of Kakao's Map Business Development Team, said, "Through this pilot, we plan to verify the effectiveness of ultra-precise transportation data and continue advancing urban transportation information services."

Domestic telecom carriers are also deploying accumulated AI and autonomous network technologies to prevent communication disruptions. SK Telecom is operating its self-developed AI network management system "A-One," dividing the Gwanghwamun area into three zones based on crowd density for customized network operations.

LG Uplus is deploying technology that enables networks to autonomously assess and respond to situations without manual intervention. When traffic concentrates in specific areas, the system adjusts base station signal ranges in real-time to distribute load to surrounding equipment. The company has deployed mobile base stations and temporary equipment at more than 10 key locations around Gwanghwamun.

KT has activated its "Network Intensive Management System," adding over 90 wireless infrastructure units including six mobile base stations around Gwanghwamun and City Hall. The company will also apply its AI-based automatic traffic control solution "W-SDN" to handle base station overload situations.