LONDON—Neutral Wireless, a provider of private 5G connectivity solutions for live production and large-scale events, together with Haivision have released details about their work with ITN on a private 5G live broadcast deployment supporting the London New Year’s Eve Fireworks 2025/26 production.

The deployment by ITN, Neutral Wireless, and Haivision during the London New Year’s Eve Fireworks 2025/26 is notable as the UK’s first live broadcast deployment using newly short notice, short duration n40 band spectrum at 2320 to 2340 MHz. It enabled agile, high quality production workflows that reached millions of viewers at midnight.

The joint deployment brought together ITN’s live production expertise, Neutral Wireless’ private 5G platform and Haivision’s live video contribution technology to demonstrate how emerging spectrum options can transform connectivity for crowded live events where public mobile networks can become congested.

Working collaboratively, the partners deployed wireless production infrastructure across a complex and high demand density urban environment, supporting resilient live content delivery at national scale.

A portable Neutral Wireless Pop-up 5G Pro system was used to deploy a single cell, providing coverage along the riverbank for wireless camera positions. Two full HD camera feeds were delivered to a local Haivision StreamHub in the production gallery using Falkon X2 and Haivision Pro mobile video transmitters connected to the n40 private network.

The introduction from UK regulator Ofcom of short notice, short duration licenses in the 2.3GHz band spectrum announced on 3rd December 2025 is expected to simplify licensing and accelerate deployment timelines for users including short term productions, allowing broadcasters to establish high performance networks in days rather than weeks.

Tony Dotchin, field support manager at ITN said: “This deployment showed how quickly we can establish reliable connectivity in one of the year’s busiest broadcast environments. By combining private 5G with modern IP workflows, we worked with greater agility while maintaining the high production standards expected of ITN.”

By adopting modern IP video workflows supported by private 5G connectivity, the deployment reduced reliance on extensive cabling, large outside broadcast compounds and traditional infrastructure. This approach supports more sustainable production models by lowering logistical requirements while enabling teams to deploy connectivity precisely where it is needed.

“Collaborating closely with ITN and Haivision allowed us to demonstrate how new spectrum like n40 can unlock faster, more flexible production environments,” explained Malcolm Brew chief engineer at neutral wireless. “It’s not about replacing existing broadcast workflows but enhancing them with wireless capabilities that make live production more engaging, scalable and efficient.”

Geoffrey Aitken, vice president EMEA sales, broadcast at Haivision added that “Live broadcasters are under increasing pressure to deliver higher quality content from more locations while working within tighter timelines and more complex connectivity environments. Private 5G helps address one of the industry’s biggest challenges: ensuring reliable, low-latency video contribution in crowded or unpredictable network conditions. By combining private cellular networks with wireless transmission, broadcasters gain the flexibility to deploy cameras anywhere while maintaining the performance and resilience required for live production.”

The partners on the deployment also noted that the successful broadcast demonstrates how private 5G is moving beyond trials into operational use across live news, sport and entertainment. The deployment builds on Neutral Wireless’ broader work delivering private 5G production across land, sea and air environments, alongside ITN’s continued exploration of new production technologies and Haivision’s expertise in low latency video contribution.

BARCELONA, Spain—XGN Global and X1 Mobile are showcasing their newly released rugged smartphone capable of receiving 5G Broadcast television signals at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), March 2-5.

The device, said to be the world’s first commercial 5G Broadcast smartphone, has been specifically designed for first responder solutions. It delivers reliable, high-quality broadcast content in demanding environments where traditional cellular networks may be congested or unavailable.

5G Broadcast is a free-to-air technology that enables direct delivery of live television, audio and emergency information to compatible devices without requiring a cellular subscription or consuming mobile data.

This one-to-many broadcast approach leverages existing broadcast infrastructure for efficient, wide-area coverage, making it well-suited for public safety, emergency response and mass-event communications. The smartphone enables first responders to receive emergency alerts in less than half of a second even when cellular networks are down or overloaded.

The first model of this 5G Broadcast-enabled rugged smartphone is a European variant, supporting the majority of European television frequencies and will be available starting in May 2026.

A companion Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) device is scheduled to follow in Q3 2026. X1 Mobile will subsequently release a U.S.-specific model capable of receiving U.S. broadcast frequencies in Q3 2026.

5G Broadcast is poised for commercial availability later this year in the United States, building on experimental licenses and planned network expansions covering millions of viewers.

The 5G Broadcast solution integrates Enensys 5G Broadcast Client, the Cube Agent Mobile, which serves as the interface between the 5G Broadcast chipset and the application player while also managing the seamless switch between broadcast and unicast modes.

The Cube Agent is interfaced with proprietary code developed by X1 Mobile, ensuring seamless reception and robust performance tailored for mission-critical applications.

XGN Global operates in the United States and Ireland, while X1 Mobile operates in the United States.

See XGN Global and X1 Mobile in the Enensys booth (5B-61-34) at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

More information is available on the Enensys website.



Time again for a look into the future as to what we can expect in 2026. Of course, I am not a clairvoyant, and you may agree or disagree with my list. But I hope my predictions—based on my perspective from covering the industry—give you something to think about:

No. 1: U.S. broadcasters muddle through another year of incremental steps towards a 3.0 future. With no date certain for 1.0 shut-off and the freedom to make the switch whenever they think best, the tiptoe towards NextGen TV will continue.

No. 2: The Digital Rights Management (DRM) faceoff between the ATSC 3.0
Security Authority, some viewers and some CE companies over 3.0 content
will be resolved—most likely leaving all sides a bit disappointed but for different reasons.

No. 3: Agentic AI makes its presence felt in the broadcast back office. Workflow efficiency has been the mantra of TV production, news and distribution for decades. With the help of agentic AI, many back-office processes will be more fully automated.

No. 4: 5G Broadcast proponents in the U.S. broadcast industry will continue to make their case but won’t find the success they seek.

No. 5: Re-evaluation of the role public cloud plays in media workflows will continue. Some media organizations will decide to repatriate their valuable content from the public cloud in favor of using a combination of cloud and their own private storage.

No. 6: “Hybrid” will be the word to watch in 2026, whether it refers to media storage, production or distribution.

No. 7: Media Exchange Layer (MXL) will continue to garner industry attention and support for its development, as broadcasters and other media creators look
to one day leverage software-defined media workflows that streamline operations and address interoperability issues.

No. 8: Stations and station groups will begin to get their arms around the best that the “creator economy” has to offer, especially when paired with the content they already create, leading to a variety of benefits for broadcasters—perhaps most importantly, occupying more mindshare among younger members of the public.

No. 9: The funding nightmare public broadcasting is living through will have a bit of a silver lining for the rest of the industry, as displaced technical workers and engineers will create a talent pool commercial broadcasters can tap to help address their engineering aging crisis.

No. 10: The Department of Transportation-funded Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) will demonstrate the strength of the solution as a relatively affordable backup for GPS—especially when it comes to precise timing—and will turn heads among those responsible for national security.

That’s a wrap. Here’s wishing everyone a great 2026!

Moving live pictures from place to place was once a feat so spectacular that the European Broadcasting Union invented the Eurovision Song Contest, which has become so well-known that not many people realize its name derives from the continental broadcast distribution system of the same name.

As so often, though, the sheer R&D budget of consumer electronics has almost trivialized the once-tricky, and several generations of cellphone technology have been winning work from geostationary satellites, so much that the sight of a dish on a truck has become a rarity.

According to Daniel Pisarski, chief technology officer at LiveU, contribution via cellular networks for broadcasters is at more than 90%. “I’d probably even go a little higher there—there’s a lot of customers who still roll the van and load all the equipment in it—and they use bonded cellular,” he says.

That approach is LiveU’s day-to-day. “LiveU has used cellular as a primary form of transmission for 15-plus years, all the way back to pre-3G in the first rounds of development, through 4G, 4G LTE and five years ago when 5G was launching,” Pisarski adds.

The market, Pisarski suggests, has achieved a degree of maturity. “It’s now become fine-tuning, rather than the big changes we saw for the last 10 years,” he says. “We just launched an eSIM in LiveU IQ … we already have a four-camera unit. Can I plug in two monitors? Can I see the studio feed in the field?”

When IP networking is involved, Pisarski says, remote computing inevitably beckons. “That’s led us to focus on the cloud side,” he says. “You could have a vision mixer. We have a full-time recording feature that records every feed that can run in the cloud or on-prem. We have expanded on that because customers have said, ‘Can you help me more with my workflow?’ ”

Private 5G
The attractive idea of private 5G has sometimes been limited by technology built for long-term infrastructure rather than weekend events. Andreas Mohnke, business integration manager at Riedel, was involved in the company’s recent acquisition of private 5G specialists MECSware and the Easy5G system. “They’re reducing the complexity of setting up a 5G network very nicely,” Mohnke says. “When you set up a 5G cellphone network, normally it’s up to 3,000 parameters; Easy5G has 30.”

Mohnke describes that private network as “a wireless layer—you need an internet backbone to transfer the data. These base stations are connected over Ethernet. Then, anything that can plug in a SIM or an eSIM can play, and only these devices are allowed to play … it’s like a kind of hardened and more secure Wi-Fi.“

Range and bandwidth inevitably depends on the vexed issue of spectrum allocation, Mohnke says. “It depends on which band you’re allowed to distribute the signal,” he says. “The licenses you have for the frequency equal the amount of throughput you can do. We had a match-day test in Germany, which was fully crowded with 80,000 people, and we had a realistic throughput of 200 Mbps, bidirectional.”

Such numbers, Mohnke emphasizes, are often several times what public infrastructure can achieve—although gaining access to the spectrum can require experience. “We have a team which is very experienced in dealing with authorities,” he says. “The Europeans are facing some friction. But we see now a little movement in [harmonizing spectrum allocation] in all EU member states.”

At NAB Show in April, Verizon introduced a new mobile Private 5G Network framework designed for live content production, working with one of the world’s largest tech companies, according to Josh Arensberg, Verizon’s global leader of media and entertainment.

“Verizon has been collaborating with NVIDIA on a portable, environmentally controlled setup that enables broadcasters to manage dozens of camera feeds with intelligent video prioritization,” he says. “The AI tools work in tandem with human broadcasters to automatically highlight key moments, streamlining the production process and enhancing viewer engagement.

“Ultimately, we see the innovation around 5G and broadcasting as a single, converged ecosystem that blends the efficiency of broadcasting with the interactivity and personalization of 5G,” Arensberg adds. “5G already supports current industry use cases and it will only continue to improve. Innovations such as network slicing unlock endless possibilities for content delivery.”

Globally, 5G seems to be gaining traction with even the largest events. “The coronation in the U.K. was done with 5G by BBC,” Mohnke adds. “We met two wonderful guys—and we had intense, technical, deep discussions—at the EBU workshop in Munich recently. We’re all driven to see 5G be a success story. It’s good to be in contact and to talk to one another.”

Going Hybrid
Meanwhile, field equipment is increasingly able to blend 5G with other ways to connect. Mark Horchler, product marketing director at Haivision, describes the symphony of hardware and software that makes all this possible. “We’ve always done a bit of both,” he says. “Technically, we’re selling hardware products, but it’s [a lot of] software—all of our products you can access via web browsers, and last year we introduced our cloud platform, Hub 360.”

The clear intent here is to find a way to leverage all available infrastructure as required, Horchler says. “We have a range of bonded cellular transmitters, our MoJoPro app, and receivers,” he says. “All our transmitters have bonded cellular. We have several mobile modems and also they have Ethernet outputs as well, so you can connect the LEO satellite by Ethernet to the modem.”

That makes for flexibility and efficient use of available networks. “We had a French company covering people running up Mont Blanc,” Horchler recalls. “They were using cellular networks up to a certain altitude where there’s no coverage, then they’d use Starlink. So we’re seeing a hybrid 5G and LEO, which is not the same as traditional C-band but that has become useful for a lot of use cases.”

End-to-End Platform
Moving video over 5G—or an IP network running on any other transmission layer—will always require some amount of protocol. Zixi began as a protocol with broadcast in mind, although the success of 5G and IP in general has beckoned much more.

“Now, we’re a full platform with analytics and a lot of application-level features,” Phil Abbott, Zixi’s senior solutions architect, says. “The platform and the protocol are kind of symbiotic. We’re a network protocol, we wrap video streams [but] now have extra features for transcode and various video processing at the core.”

Making network transport of video practical has always demanded a concerted effort to make the technology usable. For crews in the field, time and appetite for network engineering is limited. “We’re making it all work for them so they can just use it,” Abbott confirms. “Can you dial in, say, the MTU on the server level of a protocol? Yes, your most savvy of engineers can, but the point is, we’re making this work for customers to leverage 5G, to leverage our protocol.”

The enthusiasm is clear, and Abbott adds that Zixi is continuing to innovate. “The CTO is the inventor, so we still have the brain behind the platform thinking up ways to make the protocol more resilient … but our features are video features—our ability to switch streams, to transcode,” he says. “And Zixi is extremely lightweight; we can run on a Raspberry Pi. People want to put the full broadcaster software on very lightweight compute—and you’re sending a handful of camera feeds? That’s nothing. And we’re doing a lot of testing with Starlink, with 5G, K-Band satellite.”

Much of this capability is built on fundamentals that might not exist but for the mass market, although constructing devices capable of implementing them all in a broadcast workflow is a challenge in itself.

Sukh Grewal, connectivity solutions specialist for Dejero, explains the company’s evolution. “Technically we’re a software company,” he says, “but we had to build the hardware, because … there’s not many manufacturers that can build multi-modem video transmission devices.”

That hardware will always be dependent on the available network, and Grewal warns that services sold to the public can be inconsistently described. “In the U.S., they’ve rolled out new fiber—they’ve probably put in real 5G,” he says. “As soon as you get to the outskirts you don’t get that. What is the telco’s return on investment? They rolled out 4G, and they hadn’t returned the cost of that before standing up 5G. They can’t charge us more because we won’t pay more, so how do they do that?”

One solution is to wait for the telecommunications providers to do the right thing. Grewal echoes the view, though, that private networks offer more certainty. “Tier-one sports will still use satellite trucks, and they’ll have our kind of tech as a backup,” he says. “[We can] take a 5G network and blend a Starlink, or we can do just Starlink if we want to. The BBC used [private 5G] for the queen’s funeral and we’ve done it for golf events. We stood up a private 5G network and put in two private 5G network SIM cards, and two public networks, and we were able to blend. We can set it up in two or three hours. It’s as plug-and-play as possible.”

Having made various types of radio networks feasible, the industry now seems set on making it easy, and 5G—at various levels—has made even public infrastructure sufficiently capable to play a big part. Perhaps the key innovation, though, is the option to hop between networks to optimize bandwidth, cost or both—all conveniences which make it easy to forget what live remote contribution once required.

HC2 Broadcasting, a station group that advocates the adoption of 5G Broadcasting for the U.S. broadcasting industry, is asking the FCC to approve the standard for low power TV stations to move to potentially move to an all datacasting model.

The request comes a year after the group, which owns 131 LPTV/Class A stations and four full power stations, asked the commission to allow two Connecticut LPTVs conduct experimental broadcasts 5G Broadcasts. The FCC approved the first experimental 5G Broadcast station—Milachi Media's WWOO-LD in Boston in 2023.

HC2 has been working with XGN Networks, a start-up led by "SuperFrank" Copsidas to allow broadcasters to adopt 5G Broadcast as a voluntary alternative to ATSC 3.0/NextGen TV, which was approved by the FCC in 2017 and is currently available to about 76% of U.S. TV households.

5G Broadcasting is a direct to mobile platform that runs independently of any other service on a smartphone chip be it cell service, satellite, wifi, or Bluetooth. Advocates, including the “5G Broadcast Collective”—which includes HC2, Malachi Media and the LPTV Broadcasters Association—say broadcasters can deploy 5G Broadcast by replacing their current exciter with 5G Broadcast exciter with modulator and 5G core software, without impacting the station’s current transmitter and antenna.

Although 5G Broadcast has been approved by international standards bodies, the standard has not been approved for commercial use in the U.S. and there are no mobile devices on the market that can receive such 5G Broadcasts in this country.

Although HC2’s petition doesn’t ask the LPTV to abandon current rules that require them to broadcast at least one free-to-air standard definition (“SD”) signal, it does want the commission to explore a potential all video-free future.

(Read: "What is 5G Broadcast?")

“With the remaining capacity available for ancillary and supplementary services, the Commission should examine whether the time has come to allow all 6 MHz of LPTV spectrum to be exclusively devoted to datacasting without the need for a free-to-air signal, given the ubiquitous nature of 5G-capable devices.”

Datacasting is nothing new for U.S. broadcasters. PBS has partnered with public safety and educational organizations to test datacasting over ATSC 3.0 and commercial broadcasters such as Sinclair, Nexstar Scripps and Gray have teamed up to launch Edgebeam to use 3.0 for enterprise datacasting services.

Spectrum Efficiency
HC2 says it is petitioning the FCC for several reasons based on LPTV’s business model and the public interest.

“The technology allows an LPTV station to transmit a single 5G signal to its entire service area, which can be received by any compatible mobile device,” HC2 said. “5G Broadcast thus provides both the spectrum efficiency of the one-to-many structure of broadcast operations and access to compatible mobile devices on existing 5G networks. LPTV stations utilizing 5G Broadcast are poised to deliver numerous benefits across multiple services, including enhanced programming, datacasting, connectivity, and public safety."

HC2 added that adopting its proposal “would require very few rule modifications,” and that the rue changes are aimed at “authorizing its use by LPTV stations on a voluntary basis.”

It also said that LPTV broadcasters would continue to operate according to FCC rules.

"LPTV stations that voluntarily choose to operate in 5G Broadcast mode would be required to comply with all of the existing technical requirements for LPTV stations… including maximum power levels and emission requirements," adding that “because there is no proposed increase in power levels or in unwanted emissions, there is no greater potential for increased harmful interference to any other broadcast or non-broadcast users than there would be from LPTV stations using the ATSC 1.0 or ATSC 3.0 transmission standard.”

LPTVs are Different
HC2 also argued that the LPTV sector has been treated differently than full-power stations during the current transition to ATSC 3.0., and that because LPTV stations are not required to also carry 1.0 simulcasts, the industry is better positioned to experiment with 5G Broadcast.

“LPTV stations have been less engaged in the ATSC 3.0 conversion, and the majority of LPTV stations still operate in ATSC 1.0 mode,” the petition said. “Indeed, in recognition of the fact that LPTV stations are fundamentally different from full power TV stations when it comes to ATSC 3.0, the Commission specifically authorized LPTV stations to 'flash-cut' to ATSC 3.0 without being obligated to continue airing an ATSC 1.0 simulcast. Full power TV stations, in contrast, are subject to a burdensome ATSC 1.0 simulcasting requirement when they voluntarily elect to broadcast in ATSC 3.0.”

HC2 also said it was not asking for any mandates requiring consumer electronics manufacturers to make devices compatible with the standard.

“Importantly, unlike the recent petition requesting a hard transition date for converting TV stations from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0, this Petition would not impose any mandates on TV receiver manufacturers or require multichannel video programming distributors (“MVPDs”) to make any changes to their physical infrastructure,” they said.

HC2 argued that 5G Broadcast represents the next generation of television, contrasting it with ATSC 3.0’s approach.

“Like ATSC 3.0, 5G Broadcast transmissions eventually may be receivable on conventional television sets, depending on market conditions,” they said. “HC2 is not proposing that TV manufacturers be obligated to include 5G Broadcast-capability within their sets because the marketplace should decide that issue. Moreover, even though the concept of solely ‘in the home' TV viewing may now be considered quaint, the marketplace of TV 'receivers' in today’s world is now essentially anyone with a handheld compatible 5G device, in any location.”

It also called for the signals to be unencrypted and “freely available to any viewer with a compatible device or receiver, without the use of a decoder.”

HC2 says current tests have been very positive. “Preliminary results… confirm that 5G Broadcast reception from on-site trial receivers has been excellent, with strong signal reception as far as 20 or more miles away from the transmission site.”

HC2 said its proposal is consistent with FCC rules that require using spectrum that is most beneficial to the public interest and issued a challenge to opponents, quoting FCC rules that “[a]ny person or party (other than the Commission) who opposes a new technology or service proposed to be permitted under this chapter shall have the burden to demonstrate that such proposal is inconsistent with the public interest.”

Although FCC Chairman Brendon Carr is bullish on advancing 5G technologies, his position on "5G Broadcast" is less known. However, he has called for new spectrum auctions that could impact its future.

MUNICH and DUSSELDORF, Germany—Rohde & Schwarz and European tower company Vantage Towers have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to advance the commercialization of 5G Broadcast (5GB) technology across Europe.

The agreement will support deployment of 5G Broadcast for its commercial rollout, which is expected to begin in 2026. Vantage Towers has more than 86,000 tower sites.

“We are delighted to partner with Rohde & Schwarz to bring large-scale 5G broadcast coverage to life,” Badiaa Bazarbacha, co-managing director (interim) of Vantage Towers Germany, said. “This collaboration combines the strengths of both companies, with Rohde & Schwarz’s innovative 5G Broadcast equipment being deployed across Vantage Towers’ extensive network of towers, rooftop sites and indoor coverage solutions. By utilizing our comprehensive infrastructure portfolio, we are enabling media broadcasters to achieve a rapid and efficient commercial rollout of this cutting-edge technology.”

The MOU outlines a collaborative framework between Rohde & Schwarz and Vantage Towers to develop the business and market readiness for 5G Broadcast. Since the commercial deployment of the technology targets multiple applications like Live and Linear Content, Automotive Beyond Entertainment, Venue Casting and Public Warning Services, uninterrupted coverage with an optimal quality of service for consumers is imperative, the companies said.

The companies will create a go-to-market model that leverages Vantage Towers’ extensive asset base and neutral host expertise and Rohde & Schwarz’s portfolio of network solutions, services and close relationships with Broadcast Network Operators worldwide, they said.

“5G Broadcast will provide enhanced viewing experiences for consumers on the go, along with high quality of service for broadcasters through optimized outdoor mobile coverage and specific public indoor venues,” Rohde & Schwarz Vice President for Broadcast Distribution Steven Edwards said. “Using the locations of Vantage Towers and the Rohde & Schwarz 5G Broadcast solution, we look forward to helping develop a creative 5G Broadcast solution for Broadcasters and BNOs in Europe and beyond.”

The partnership focuses on facilitating the rollout of 5G Broadcast networks in strategic European markets with expansion planned for additional markets in the coming years.

More information is available on the Rohde & Schwarz website.

XGen Network (XGN) said today that it plans to conduct what it calls “the world's first” demonstration of ancillary data delivery to a road sign using 5G Broadcast at its stand during the 2024 IBC Show, Sept. 13-16 at the RAI Amsterdam.

Launched in the U.S. just prior to the 2023 IBC Show, XGen uses over the air broadcast to transmit 5G (currently) to mobile devices using Qualcomm chips. XGN has also made software available for the public to receive 5G Broadcast on SDRs (software defined radio).

Currently, one low-power station, WWOO in the Boston DMA, is testing 5G Broadcasts and the company has several applications for experimental licences with the FCC to launch similar transmissions in western Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut.

European broadcasters are also exploring 5G Broadcast as well, with French broadcaster TDF testing the delivery of linear live TV and radio services over 5G Broadcast prior to the Paris OIympics.

XGN CEO Frank Copsidas said the IBC demo could have “profound” implications for the future of emergency alerting.

“This is more than just a technological advancement; it is a revolution in how we communicate, respond to emergencies, and connect with our surroundings," he said. "The versatility and power of 5G Broadcast makes it a must-have tool for future infrastructure systems. XGN's 5G Broadcast technology also presents new business models for broadcasters.” stated XGN’s CEO, Frank Copsidas.

XGEN will be in Stand 14.B17. For more information, visit https://show.ibc.org/

Introduction
The Holy Grail of spectrum planning is finding the most efficient transmission path for the most used data.  In today’s digital world, this data can range from NBA basketball games to enhanced GPS coordinates to 3D maps for autonomous cars.  International and domestic spectrum czars have recognized that flexible channel use is the licensing key, and U.S. broadcasters have jumped at the opportunity.  While continuing to provide public interest-based video programming, they are now fully embracing a new transmission standard: ATSC 3.0, aka NextGen Broadcasting.

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute, with help from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), has cobbled together a different option: the so-called “5G Broadcast System.”  5G Broadcast is built on the existing unicast 4G LTE waveform.  It is far from “new.” Despite the hype (and money) surrounding these two options—ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast—they are not equal. Is this Betamax vs. VHS? Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD? PlayStation vs. Xbox? Or is this something more dynamic? Which is better? Read on. (Spoiler alert: it’s ATSC 3.0!)

Background
Technological advances and audience demand have pushed past plain-old linear program services. Free over-the-air (OTA) transmissions are giving way to paid, on-demand services, both physically connected (cable, fiber, phones, internet) and wirelessly connected (satellites, cellular and WiFi). Those have been, by and large, inefficient, one-to-many, dedicated, unicast services.    

U.S. broadcasters, recognizing their inherent advantage of robust, one-to-many, high power/high tower (HPHT) broadcast capabilities, have now added fundamental enhancements. Those include transmissions using the same “language” of the internet—Internet Protocol (IP)—and new frequency modulation and coding technologies for reliable mobile reception. They have also solved the challenge of delivering hyper-localized content to different parts of a community. 

The new capabilities of ATSC 3.0 are elegant, efficient, and evolvable, aligning perfectly with the increased demand for multimedia content over mobile devices, which have swamped conventional cellular unicast networks. For television broadcasters, the ‘ALL IP’ standard and associated revenue projections have stoked the imaginations of those looking for whole new business opportunities.  

Meanwhile some entrenched wireless players (e.g. Qualcomm and Ericsson) are hyping approaches and technologies that facially appear to focus on similar objectives. While this reinforces the idea of additional revenue opportunities in mobile and datacasting, the allure is essentially illusory. Yes, they both provide IP transport, are more efficient than previous iterations and provide enhanced content.  But the similarities end at the physical layer: The ATSC 3.0 system is dramatically more efficient, robust, mobile, and evolvable.

Here’s why.

ATSC 3.0 – NextGen Broadcasting
NextGen Broadcasting is the most advanced digital terrestrial broadcast standard designed for over-the-air reception. It delivers an extraordinarily improved viewing experience, supporting ultra-high-definition high dynamic range (HDR) content, immersive audio, interactivity, and other advanced features to both fixed and mobile devices. 

It also enables use of the broadcast spectrum for a host of new data services. It was designed from the outset to offer multiple simultaneous wireless-based services in addition to broadcast television. It simultaneously accommodates fixed, portable, and mobile use cases, allowing flexible spectrum utilization tailored to various new platforms. And the ATSC 3.0 standard is adaptable for different use cases in different countries. 

At the heart of the ATSC 3.0 standard is System Discovery Signaling—the so-called “Bootstrap.”  It serves as the universal entry point into the broadcast waveform, ensuring that all receive devices identify and decode each unique signal, even those yet to be defined. This “evolvability” attribute is key to ATSC 3.0 ability to expand and adapt to support emerging offerings.

ATSC 3.0 Key Features

• Ultra-High-Definition (UHD) and Immersive Audio: ATSC 3.0 supports UHD resolutions with higher image quality and immersive audio formats, enhancing the overall viewing experience.
  
• Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband: It seamlessly integrates OTA broadcasting with broadband, enabling interactive content, targeted advertising, and other data-related features.
  
• Advanced Emergency Infomation: The robust bootstrap permits triggers for advanced emergency alerting that can wake up devices at very low signal levels, enabling the delivery of rich media supplements to target geolocations.
  
• Interactive Services: Viewers can access interactive content, on-demand video, and personalized services through the hybrid capabilities of ATSC 3.0.
  
• Data Delivery as a Service: IP transport and one-to-many architecture of the high power/high tower broadcast service provides efficient delivery of common data including video offloading, enhanced GPS offerings, automobile telematics delivery and IoT support services.
  
• Efficient and Flexible Broadcast/Multicast: OTA broadcast, native to ATSC 3.0, enables efficient data delivery to multiple users of fixed and portable/mobile services simultaneously.

5G Broadcast
In Europe, the search for an IP-based solution for fixed and mobile broadcasting gained momentum when the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project shifted its focus to DVB-I (IP content delivery). Activities like those of 5G-Xcast, 5G-MAG identified needs and uses of IP-based delivery.  5G Broadcast emerged as a multicast technology specified by the 3GPP, designed to provide broadcast and multicast services over various networks. 

(Read more: What is 5G Broadcast?)

To be clear—5G Broadcast is based on the old 4G LTE waveform. Over the past few years, 3GPP has tried to meet the challenges of the OTA broadcast environment. But, despite work to better support OTA broadcast environments, efforts to improve the physical layer of the underlying 4G LTE Broadcast platform (time and frequency interleaving as an example) have been rejected and/or withdrawn, including the latest Release from 3GPP.

5G Broadcast Key Features:

1. Efficient Multicast: 5G broadcast uses multicast transmission, efficiently delivering data to multiple users simultaneously, reducing the network load compared to unicast streaming to individual users.
   
2. Content Delivery Efficiency: It efficiently distributes live events, emergency alerts, software updates, and other high-demand content to many users as a “one-to-many” service.
   
3. Cellular Network Integration: 5G broadcast could seamlessly integrate with existing 5G cellular networks, enabling mobile network operators to provide content services without significant infrastructure changes.
   
4. Broadcast Mode: It operates in broadcast mode where many users need access to the same content concurrently.

Comparing the Two
There has been considerable hype suggesting that these two technologies are roughly equivalent and that 5G Broadcast has an edge given it is a 3GPP standard. While both technologies employ IP transport and one-to-many wireless distribution technologies using the same modulation scheme, the similarities largely end there. 

The implied notion that, because 5G Broadcast is a 3GPP standard and in phones today, it somehow magically opens the market to hundreds of millions of devices compatible with 5G wireless reception is wishful thinking. Here are a half dozen reasons why ATSC wins out:

1. ATSC 3.0 has the Bootstrap: Absent from 5G Broadcast, the real technological magic of the Bootstrap is its ability to discover and identify a near infinite number of different signals (including those that have yet to be defined) and pass only the needed one to the specific receive device, thereby enabling a host of new services. More significantly, the robust bootstrap carries triggers for advanced emergency alerting that can wake up devices at very low signal levels—think deep indoors.
   
2. ATSC 3.0 has better error correction: Better error correction means a more reliable signal than 5G Broadcast. The two transmission standards are vastly different in performance. 5G Broadcast employs a suboptimal waveform.
   
3. ATSC 3.0 is “robust by design” in mobile environments: ATSC 3.0 outperforms 5G Broadcast in mobile environments with fast fading channels. Its sophisticated time interleaver provides a 3 dB to 11 dB performance advantage, depending on vehicle speeds. 5G Broadcast has worse pedestrian (<3 kph) performance and terrible mobile (Doppler) performance above 10 kph since it has NO bit interleaving. This may be one reason why older versions of 5G Broadcast have been discarded by mobile operators.
   
4. ATSC 3.0 is compatible with IMT Services: Claims that the ATSC 3.0 physical layer is incompatible with International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) services are misleading. ASTC 3.0 has demonstrated interworking at the IP level, and major mobile ecosystem stakeholders have endorsed this for future 3GPP standards activity. If differing physical layers were a real issue, WiFi (an IEEE standard), as an example, would similarly be an implementation problem.
   
5. ATSC 3.0 can share IMT resources: The assertion that only 5G Broadcast can share IMT resources is overstated. ATSC 3.0 can also achieve this through device-level solutions and network topology adjustments. While there are minor challenges any standard would face in integration at the device level (antenna size, receiver front-end, band-filtering as examples), there are solution paths at the device level (e.g., the MarkONE phone). Notably, there are no commercial phones today that support either 5G Broadcast or ATSC 3.0.
   
6. The cost of adding ATSC 3.0 to chips is negligible: While ATSC 3.0 is not yet integrated into IMT device system-on-chip silicon, the cost of adding an ATSC 3.0 demodulator is negligible compared to the incremental cost of mobile chipsets. The front-end frequency tuner, filters, and antenna(e) are common to either ATSC 3.0 or 5G Broadcast. 

Conclusion
In technology comparisons, it's crucial to separate what we think we know from the facts. 5G Broadcast has some visceral appeal:  Why not simply integrate and extend broadcast into the already existing cell phone 3GPP ecosystem? How hard can that be? However, that’s a compromise that has serious drawbacks. With 5G Broadcast you would give up on:

• a standard that can grow as needs and uses change,
• technological advancements and future capabilities while maintaining backwards compatibility, and
• maximizing the flexibility to do other things with your valuable spectrum. 

It’s as if you have a plot of land and are forever restricted to only growing corn on it.  Would you give up growing a more profitable plant or mining for minerals below the dirt or constructing a high rise to maximize the value of that land?  We should want to maximize the flexibility and new uses for our little “plot of spectrum.” The best equipment to maximize that is ATSC 3.0.  It’s the equivalent of a sophisticated EV tractor vs. a shovel. Go with the tractor. The upside is far, far greater.

AMSTERDAM—Rohde & Schwarz is teaming up with Qualcomm to demonstrate a full end-to-end live streaming demonstration showcasing Broadcast/Multicast capabilities over 5G. During the show live content will be transmitted using a 5G Broadcast signal over-the-air giving visitors a taste of an advanced live mobile experience. The demonstration will offer insight into how network operators and broadcasters can leverage 5G Broadcast/Multicast to create new and innovative services across a wide range of business segments, while benefitting from high spectral efficiency and reduced costs, Rohde said.

The two companies also partnered on the 5G Broadcast/Multicast service demo at the NAB Show in April. 

The live 5G Broadcast streaming demonstration is formed by Rohde & Schwarz’s end-to-end 3GPP compliant solution, comprising a 5G Broadcast RAN enabled with R&S TLU9 transmitter and the Broadcast/Multicast Core Network powered by the Broadcast Service and Control Center (BSCC2.0). During IBC 2022, a live signal will be transmitted over-the-air from the Rohde & Schwarz booth, using Kathrein antenna systems to a smartphone form-factor test device from Qualcomm Technologies. The workflow will also leverage a filter provided by Spinner.

Built on the 3GPP Rel-16 feature-set, the 5G Broadcast solution operates in a Receive-Only Mode (ROM), Free-To-Air (FTA) and without the need for a SIM card (SIM-free reception). Rohde & Schwarz will show the 5G broadcast dedicated mode in action, with a standalone transmitter, operating within the UHF band. 

Manfred Reitmeier, VP broadcast and amplifier systems at Rohde & Schwarz, commented: “5G Broadcast technology has the potential to transform the way content services are delivered without compromising existing mobile cellular services. We are excited to show IBC visitors what is possible today with the current technology and give them a taste of a real world 5G Broadcast scenario. We are proud to continue our collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies as we work to drive the technology forward and show partners and customers exactly what they can achieve.” 

“We are delighted to bring this collaboration with the Rohde & Schwarz team to IBC 2022 and show how the delivery of digital TV content over 3GPP standardized technology can look without the need for additional chipsets," said Lorenzo Casaccia, VP of technical standards & intellectual property at Qualcomm Europe, Inc. “Together with our new 5G R&D technology demonstration we have repeatedly proven that 5G Broadcast is here today and can be experienced first-hand.” 

The demo can be viewed at the Rohde & Schwarz booth (Stand 7.B21) at the RAI Amsterdam during the 2022 IBC Show, Sept. 9-13.

Part 2 of 2

In my last column I focused on ATSC 3.0 measurement gear at the 2022 NAB Show. This month I’ll review some of the other items I found interesting at the show and look at the Broadcast Engineering Conference’s discussion on using drones for tower inspections. 

Transmitting—5G for Broadcast?
I wasn’t expecting any breakthrough technology in high-power UHF transmitters in Las Vegas but I did find time to visit three manufacturer’s exhibits and saw some interesting products. Rohde and Schwarz (R&S), which has been promoting the use of 5G for broadcast in the United States, featured its 5G transmitters for broadcasting. I wanted more details as I really didn’t understand how U.S. broadcasters would use 5G transmitters.

Since the ATSC 3.0 standard allows signaling different types of waveforms in the bootstrap signal, I thought R&S might be looking at using 3GPP 5G standards in the UHF TV band. It turned out R&S envisioned using these on existing UHF 5G wireless bands licensed to wireless operators in the U.S. One idea was that broadcasters—with their high-power, high tower sites—could provide low-cost, wide-area coverage. 

A more likely scenario is wireless carriers will roll out their own 5G broadcast system and compete with broadcasters for content delivery. It will be interesting to see how this develops. For an example of how 5G and ATSC 3.0 could co-exist, Google the HP Enterprise business white paper “The Convergence of 5G and ATSC 3.0 Opens a New Era of Communications.”

Hitachi-Comark had a new compact, all-in-one transmitter built on their successful Parallax series. The transmitter uses liquid cooling with dual pumps for both the amplifiers and in-cabinet mask filter. Maximum power output for the EC700HP-BB3 is 13.2 kW. Installation is simple as it only requires hooking up power and running hoses to the outdoor heat exchangers. If that’s too much work, an air-cooled E-Compact transmitter line does not require an outdoor heat exchanger, but obviously sufficient air flow (and perhaps cooling) is required.  

The simple installation of these transmitters could make them ideal for disaster recovery or backup, although the mask filter would have to be tuned to the desired channel if shared between stations.  

Anywave also had more powerful UHF amplifiers, with a 4.5 rack unit “Marble” series transmitter providing outputting 2,200 watts. It uses the latest Ampleon BLF989E ninth-generation LDMOS chip, rated at a peak power of 1 kW and average power of 180 watts per device. Proper cooling will be essential for these compact devices.

What I found most interesting was Anywave’s chart showing a new gap filler design using a reference antenna. This is used to characterize the booster’s transmitter reflections from the surrounding environment. Anywave claimed rejection of the transmitted signal into the gap filler of up to 50 dB, allowing higher power. Download http://anywavecom.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Anywave-Gap-Filler-Indoor-Flint-Series-Product-Specification-4-22.pdf for more data. I expect low-power gap fillers to become more common as ATSC 3.0 is deployed.

Innovation from South Korea's ETRI
The Korean booth at the NAB Show usually has some interesting ATSC 3.0 technology and this year was no exception. ETRI described a system using MIMO and a 1024QAM constellation to transmit over 100 Mbps in a single ATSC 3.0 RF channel. The design requires separate transmit antennas (one for horizontal and one for vertical polarization) and a receive antenna with separate outputs for horizontal and vertical polarizations.

This is obviously incompatible with existing receive antenna installations, so I asked if LDM could be used to provide a robust non-MIMO layer at reduced bandwidth for viewers without the outdoor dual-polarized antennas. I was told it was possible, but greatly increases complexity. 

A more likely scenario would be a station provides only high-data rate service, requiring a special receive and likely professional antenna installation. A pay-only service might be possible if FCC subscription TV rules used by analog for-pay OTA companies like On-TV apply to digital broadcasts as well. Google “ETRI ATSC 3.0 MIMO” for a number of articles on the technology, many in Korean (use Google translate). 

Inspecting With Drones
In a Broadcast Engineering Conference presentation at  the NAB Show, Paul Shulins with Shulins Solutions showed how he uses drones to examine the thermal characteristics of antennas and transmission lines. TDR (time-domain reflectometry) measurements with a vector network analyzer can reveal major issues with transmission line connections but are less useful pinpointing problem areas inside antennas or heat-related problems that don’t change the line impedance. 

Shulins uses a drone outfitted with a special IR camera able to detect minor temperature differences in the line. This is more complicated than it may sound at first because the outer on copper transmission line, particularly new line, tends to reflect IR and hide internal heating. Measurements are best made before the sun has had a chance to heat the line. This IR imaging as proven it's worth in several cases, which Shulins outlined.

All it takes is one bad transmission line connection to eventually take a station off air and potentially cause expensive damage to many sections of transmission line. In Fig. 1, a thermal image shows the hot spot in a line due to a bad “O” ring that resulted in damage to 150 feet of transmission line. In Fig. 2, the arrow on the visual image provides a higher resolution view of the line. 

Due to the time of day when the visual image was taken there wasn’t much light. I stretched the contrast on the images to make the less illuminated and heated parts of the line and the tower more visible. The fault was not visible in a ground-based TDR sweep of the line. I’m now recommending IR inspections on new line installations to avoid future problems. For more information, visit https://shulinssolutions.com/drone-tower-inspections for more information.

Jason Schreiber, CEO of RF measurement provider SixArms, presented a paper on using drones to measure antenna patterns. I’ve covered drone antenna measurements in previous columns, so I won’t repeat the details. He noted measurements found several antenna patterns that didn’t match the expected pattern. In about 80% of the cases, they were due to installation errors, a common problem being the antenna rotated by one bolt hole. Manufacturers’ defects were less common. 

Of course, tower reflections result in measured patterns from side-mounted antennas being quite different than the free-space patterns. While ground measurements were enough to find that error, drone measurements would be required to discover more subtle discrepancies. SixArms also had some new measurement equipment at the NAB Show (for more information, visit www.sixarms.com). 

Testing NextGen TV on the Road
For ATSC 3.0 reception on the road, I have an early Airwavz Redzone receiver using the original LG demodulator.The SiliconDust ATSC 3.0 IP HDHomeRun gateways use the new Sony chip and in my limited testing seem to perform better than the old Airwavz tuner. 

The problem is the SiliconDust tuner requires an IP connection. Just hooking it up to the laptop’s Ethernet port results in complaint about no Internet access. I have found a way using NetworkManager in Linux to configure a shared connection between a wireless Internet link and the device and the laptop, but it is complicated. 

A much simpler solution was to buy the small TP-Link TL-WR902AC AC750 wireless travel router that connects to the hotel WiFi, provides an Ethernet port for the SiliconDust tuner, and a wireless connection to the laptop for both. The device may also come in handy when working on equipment in the field that requires an Ethernet connection as the equipment could be connected by cable to the router and accessed anywhere in the room on a laptop using WiFi—no need to string an Ethernet cable across the floor. 

As always, I welcome comments and questions. Email me at dlung@transmitter.com. I try to answer all emails promptly, but if I’m busy and the email gets buried, I might miss it. If you don’t get a response within a week or so, email me again.

MUNICH—5G broadcast technology got a test run in Brazil during September’s Rock in Rio festival, organized by the Grupo Globo TV network and Rohde & Schwarz.

The Rock in Rio festival was broadcasted in an experimental UHF channel using 5G broadcast technology, with Rohde & Schwarz providing its R&S TMU9evo transmitter and R&S BSCC network component to aid in the field trial.

This project was similar to the 5G Today trial that has been going on in Bavaria, Germany, since December 2018, also supported by Rohde & Schwarz. The goal was to validate the operability and market opportunities for 5G broadcast technology in Brazil and worldwide.