As U.S. TV station owners’ prospects increasingly depend on how they deal with challenges posed by the global 5G juggernaut, newfound flexibility in the use of the fast-evolving cellular technology is opening more promising paths to their success in the battles ahead.

“We’re now at our last chance to remain a viable communications platform across all devices,” said Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media Technologies, Sinclair’s engineering unit. The opportunity lies in the fact that multiple strands in the long and complex evolution toward broadcast and mobile service integration are coming together on commercially viable chipsets capable of making things work across all fronts, he added.

“Whether our integration into the 5G domain is by way of ATSC 3.0, 5G Broadcast or some combination of the two, we as an organization don’t care,” Aitken said. What matters above all is “over-the-air broadcast remaining viable.”

Whatever Means Necessary
Many in broadcast TV circles, including Aitken, first viewed 5G Broadcast as an approach to multicasting video and other content to smartphones aimed at circumventing ATSC 3.0. But Aitken said he saw things differently after learning about the ATSC 3.0/5G Broadcast strategy implemented by Castanet, with live LPTV prototype services supporting the current 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) version of 5G Broadcast on ATSC 3.0 transmitters in Las Vegas and Silicon Valley.

In fact, Aitken said, ONE Media plans to test the Castanet platform on Sinclair’s WIAV-CD Washington, D.C., once the LPTV station receives the multiplexing and exciter equipment from Castanet partner Televes.

“We can see how [the Castanet solution] plays against the widest variety of 3.0 receivers,” Aitken said. “I think we have a bigger variety than just about anybody. If it comes out as claimed, why wouldn’t we support another means?”

How long before the solutions developed by Sinclair and Castanet will be relevant to getting ATSC 3.0/5G convergence off the ground remains to be seen. Eventually—and not so far in the future—TV station owners will be able to bolster the long-term viability Aitken said they’re looking for by leveraging 5G as a so-called bootstrapped radio access network (RAN) component of ATSC 3.0 transmitters through implementation of the recently announced Broadcast-to-Everything (B2X) standard.

The emerging 5G/TV convergence stems from the fact that both ATSC and the wireless industry’s 3GPP have moved their respective architectures ever closer through successive waves of standards development. Like LTE, ATSC 3.0 employs orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation, and like the New Radio (NR) version of 5G, the B2X Radio Access Network (BRAN) framework will employ OFD Multiple Access (OFDMA) to support slicing capabilities with disaggregation between core and edge processing sites.

Optimizing 5G
But B2X does away with reliance on 5G broadband, although it employs techniques similar to those adopted in 3GPP’s latest Release 19 version. The idea with B2X is to optimize execution of all 5G-like functionalities in accordance with ATSC 3.0 architecture while ensuring smooth interoperability between the two domains.

Current U.S. broadcaster options related to using 5G Broadcast with ATSC 3.0, as supported by the Sinclair and Castanet solutions, are a bridge to opportunities across a virtually unlimited range of 5G multicast verticals anchored by B2X, ATSC President Madeleine Noland said. As for broadcasters that feel constrained by the fact that bandwidth availability for 5G multicasting is highly restricted by the current “lighthouse” sharing scenario of ATSC 3.0 spectrum, where Federal Communications Commission rules require full-power stations to continue ATSC 1.0 broadcasts, Noland said to stay tuned.

“I think it’s a good idea to keep an eye on B2X and what that can enable in the future,” she said.

One example of bridge-building to BTX already underway is in India, where government-run broadcaster Prasar Bharati and its technology partners are conducting direct-to-mobile (D2M) 5G/ATSC 3.0 service trials in 19 cities in preparation for commercial rollout by year-end. Smartphones and other devices will run on chipsets developed by Saankhya Labs, now owned by Tata Group’s Tejas Networks, with investment support from Sinclair. This full-reception system is built on a patented, software-defined radio platform that supports demodulator, antenna, filter and other front-end components, Aitken noted.

As this phase of the D2M strategy takes hold across India, Prasar Bharati and its tech partners have begun gearing up for the transition to B2X with high-profile standards development support from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Sinclair and the other partners backing Saankhya Labs have launched Sampige Semiconductors to create B2X chipsets “in roughly the same time frame that semiconductors supporting 5G Broadcast will be appearing in some smartphones,” Aitken said.

Ready for Qualcomm
LPTV spectrum owners, who are free of 1.0/3.0 simulcast requirements, represent an immediate market for 5G Broadcast solutions providers, as long as they implement 5G Broadcast over ATSC 3.0 transmitters as required by the FCC. Castanet is allied with what founder and Executive Chairman Vern Fotheringham describes as a coalition of LPTV spectrum holders with footprints covering 60% of the U.S. population. Castanet documents point to expectations of expanding that base to 95%.

Castanet’s immediate goal is to ensure broadcast customers are fully prepared to capitalize on the projected 2028 rollout of smartphones equipped with new Qualcomm chipsets, Fotheringham said. Those chipsets support 3GPP Release 19 advancements that bring TV reception and 5G applications together on smartphones and tablets without requiring a separate tuner or SIM card and with no impact on a user’s data cap. These
systems-on-chips (SOCs) will enable interleaving, which allows non-TV 5G signaling to share the same spectrum with TV broadcasts, and CAS muting, which prevents that TV protection mechanism from impeding the 5G flows.

Once the smartphone turnover cycle puts these new devices into mass circulation sometime around 2031-32, the floodgates should open for broadcasters, Fotheringham said. “Our capex for the 5G Broadcast master site is equivalent to the cost of a 4G macro-level site but serves population areas covered by hundreds or even thousands of those cell sites,” he added. This translates to a massive cost reduction for 5G multicasting compared to MNO reliance on narrowcast streaming, he said.

The LPTV Factor
Of course, there are two sides to 5G tech advances, with benefits also accruing in directions unfavorable to the ATSC 3.0 agenda. One such trend is the widely publicized push by some segments of the LPTV community for freedom from FCC rules limiting use of 5G Broadcast to ATSC 3.0 broadcasters.

Last month, LPTV broadcaster XGN and sister company X1 Mobile, along with Tyche Media LLC, owner of WCRN-LD Boston, filed a petition with the FCC requesting permission to completely replace ATSC TV broadcasts with 5G Broadcast distribution. This goes beyond last year’s filing by the largest LPTV station owner HC2 Broadcasting—soon to be acquired by Dish founder Charlie Ergen—that seeks authority to use 5G Broadcast overlaid on a single ATSC 1.0 TV channel with no 3.0 requirement.

The proposed rule change would require LPTV stations to stream at least one free TV channel and to devote at least 50% of the remaining spectrum capacity to the types of public-safety applications ATSC 3.0 broadcasters are considering with use of 5G, such as emergency alerts, first-responder data and GPS backup.

WCRN for the past three years has been running FCC-sanctioned tests demonstrating 5G Broadcast delivery of linear programming streams, emergency alerts, global positioning and many other public-safety solutions, said Frank Copsidas, founder of XGN/X1 and founder and president of the LPTV Broadcast Association. Elsewhere, Copsidas said, LPTV stations in France, Africa and other countries with fewer regulatory restrictions are pursuing commercial rollouts of 5G Broadcast services.

“By 2029, short-form programming produced by the TDF Group for LPTV distribution will be available to 90% of the French population,” he said.

Another player pushing 5G Broadcast—but with the full expression of the Release 19 version—is Austria-based Big Blue Marble.
With support for interleaving and CAS muting, the company’s Nakolos platform is ideally suited for enabling 5G Broadcast over existing DVB-T2 infrastructure in Europe free of licensing restrictions, said Johann Mika, Big Blue Marble’s chief innovation officer.

“From a regulatory perspective, in Austria, for example, we can ask for a 10-year license for 5G Broadcast with no issue,” Mika said. But, as with Castanet, the “missing piece for us is mobile phones.” Broadcast organizations across Europe are “working to get phone costs lower,” he added, noting that with the wait for Release 19-capable chipsets, things “aren’t 100% set yet.”

But when they are, those Qualcomm-designed chipsets will also open the gate for MNOs and 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) providers to put 5G Broadcast to use over their own networks, said Andrew Towe, a 5G Broadcast specialist and participant in media streaming standards who worked closely with WCRN at the outset of the 5G Broadcast testing project in Boston.

“It will be pretty impressive when you get to an ecosystem with all the 5G advanced capabilities working on smartphones,” Towe said, noting there is a widespread expectation in many quarters, including among European broadcasters, that when that happens, “5G is going to take over.”

Aitken is well aware of the “threat,” which he said is a big reason suppliers and broadcasters must be incentivized to move ahead with preparations for 5G rollout on ATSC 3.0, free of the 1.0 broadcast burden.

“We’re just waiting for somebody to cut the shackles,” he said. “Until they do, we have to hop around on one foot with our hands behind our backs.”

LAS VEGAS—Castanet Corp. has announced the launch of a commercial-ready hybrid ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast Internet pilot network in Las Vegas, during the 2026 NAB Show.

The deployment by Castanet and its spectrum partners follows an earlier pilot network in Silicon Valley announced with Major Market Broadcasting.

During the show, company also unveiled a live commercial-ready pilot network, opened its C5G Interactive Live Sports platform to the public and announced progress on its VoDoS wholesale satellite CDN consortium.

Building on its world-first demonstration of 5G Broadcast over ATSC 3.0 at NAB Show New York in October 2025, Castanet said the latest announcements represent measurable progress toward nationwide deployment of a scalable Broadcast Internet platform.

"The broadcast internet era is no longer theoretical. It is here," said Vern Fotheringham, founder and executive chairman of Castanet. "These milestones show the Castanet 5G Broadcast Internet is commercially viable, standards-compliant and ready to create new economics for broadcasters, content owners, sports organizations and the streaming industry."

The pilot network uses ATSC 3.0 as the transport layer for 5G Broadcast in alignment with current FCC regulations and industry standards. Castanet said the deployment demonstrates how LPTV spectrum can serve as a foundational asset in next-generation internet infrastructure.

Castanet said the pilot network showcases:

• High-quality streaming with no buffering across fixed and mobile devices
• Low-latency delivery for live content
• Performance independent of unicast congestion
• Lower cost per delivered bit at scale
• Delivery of live, on-demand and AI-generated content

The Las Vegas deployment also demonstrates how LPTV spectrum owners can transition from existing ATSC 1.0 operations into Castanet's hybrid ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast model without disrupting current service.

Castanet said its consortium of spectrum owners now includes licensees covering about 60% of the U.S. population, with additional expansion planned.

"The Castanet 5G Broadcast Internet provides a compliant path for LPTV stations to better monetize current ATSC 1.0 assets while transitioning into the future of hybrid broadcast internet services," Fotheringham said.

Castanet also announced that its C5G Interactive Live Sports platform is now open to the public after previously being demonstrated privately at NAB Show New York.

The platform is designed as a next-generation second-screen experience that transforms passive viewers into active participants. It delivers interactive, gamified and commerce-enabled content experiences to mobile phones and web users synchronized with live broadcast streams.

Kay platform features, according to Castanet, include:

• Real-time interactive content synchronized with live broadcasts
• Polls, predictions and gamified fan engagement
• Merchandise, ticketing and sponsorship integrations
• Cross-platform deployment using ATSC 1.0 today and 5G Broadcast in the future
• Broadcast-scale delivery to mobile devices and browsers

Castanet said the platform creates an immediate monetization path for broadcasters, sports teams, leagues and content owners using existing ATSC 1.0 infrastructure while providing a built-in upgrade path to Castanet's 5G Broadcast Internet network.

"Our engagement platform enables content owners to deliver next-level experiences that unlock new monetization opportunities," Fotheringham said. "The C5G Interactive Live Sports app demonstrates how second-screen experiences can deepen audience engagement while creating immediate value for spectrum holders."

Major Market Broadcasting and its flagship network, Diya TV, the nation's largest South Asian television network reaching more than 85 million viewers, plan to use the Castanet engagement platform to deliver interactive experiences to audiences nationwide. The company also plans to participate in the C5G Interactive Live Sports initiative.

"The Castanet engagement platform gives Diya TV a powerful new way to connect with our audience," said Deepti Dawar, chief operating officer of Diya TV. "This is what the future of diverse media looks like."

Castanet's third announcement was VoDoS, short for Video-on-Demand-over-Satellite, a multi-partner consortium designed to deliver one-to-many satellite CDN services for both direct-to-consumer and wholesale markets.

The platform combines national satellite distribution efficiency with lower-cost edge-cached storage to improve streaming economics, scalability and service quality.

Castanet said that VoDoS offers:

• Lower delivery costs through satellite multicast at scale
• Consistent quality independent of last-mile congestion
• Improved economics as audiences grow
• Online and offline DRM content protection
• Pre-positioned content in edge caches for faster delivery and usage intelligence

Initial target markets include mobile operators, cable companies, WISPs, satellite ISPs, OTT distributors, legacy direct-to-home providers and broadband companion services for NTN and IoT operators.

"The unicast model that has sustained the internet cannot keep pace with the economics or performance required by today's streaming demand," Fotheringham said. "VoDoS creates infrastructure that becomes more efficient as it scales."

Many stations will replace transmitters, RF systems, line and antennas as part of the channel repack after the incentive auction and it makes sense to select gear that will work for ATSC 3.0. A move to ATSC 3.0 could be as simple as replacing the transmitter’s exciter and providing an IP link from the studio, but a system designed for ATSC 1.0 alone may not support single frequency network operation, the full ATSC 3.0 channel bandwidth or the same power level as ATSC 1.0. This month I’ll cover some of the things to consider when making changes at the transmitter site.

ATSC 1.0 provides support SFNs (also called distributed transmission systems) but they haven’t been widely used in the United States, likely because it is difficult to avoid interference between the transmitters unless they are isolated by terrain. To make matters worse, different ATSC 1.0 receivers will handle the interference differently.

With ATSC 3.0, as I’ve pointed out in earlier columns, most of those problems go away with proper selection of the OFDM guard interval. However, as with ATSC 1.0, all of the ATSC 3.0 transmitters on a channel in a SFN have to transmit exactly the same signal. Optimization of the SFN requires the ATSC 3.0 signals be emitted from each transmitter at different but precise times.

This means the signal from the studio sent to the transmitters either has to contain all the data, exactly as it is to be transmitted, or that the signal from the studio has to include enough metadata to allow each of the transmitters in the SFN to create and emit exactly the same signal.

TWO APPROACHES
The first approach essentially splits the exciter between the transmitter and the studio. This requires extra bandwidth, as all of the overhead needed to create the constellation has to be added at the studio. At the NAB Show, studio transmitter link (STL) bandwidths of up to 250 Mbps were suggested for this approach.

The second approach, currently being finalized in ATSC S32, allows sending the different program and data streams, signaling information and timing information to the transmitter in a way that the exciter at the transmitter can take all these streams, add the appropriate error correction to them, create the constellation waveform and emit a signal at the correct time that matches all the other transmitters in the SFN. This standardized approach should allow an SFN using exciters from different manufacturers.

The good news is that any microwave or fiber link that supports IP transmission should work for ATSC 3.0, but the data rate required by the first approach might be for many existing microwave STL links. The ATSC 3.0 SFN standard will help solve that problem. Either approach will require additional hardware at the studio and the transmitter site.

The good news is companies are aware of this—we saw an STL using the first approach working at the NAB Show and companies are planning support for the more efficient ATSC 3.0 SFN/STL technology.

Any transmitter that can handle ATSC 1.0 should be able to transmit ATSC 3.0 with a change of exciter. It may not, however, be able to match the output power of ATSC 1.0. The reason is that ATSC 1.0, a single carrier system, has a lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) than ATSC 3.0, a multicarrier OFDM system.

A simple way to check this is to look at the specifications for the transmitter. Most transmitters sold today are offered for both ATSC (8-VSB) and DVB (COFDM) use, but the power levels are not always the same.

Comark specifies the same power levels for both modulations for its PARALLAX transmitter, as does Rohde & Schwarz for its current THU9 transmitter. However, the new Doherty amplifiers R&S showed at the NAB Show have a higher power rating for ATSC, as do GatesAir’s Maxiva “PowerSmart” transmitters. Check the datasheets for specifics and keep this in mind when specifying a replacement transmitter’s output power.

The ATSC 3.0 standard includes tools for reducing PAPR, including tone-reservation, but they can have an impact on available data bandwidth. Annex M of the ATSC Proposed Standard A/322—Physical Layer Protocol describes a peak-to-average power reduction algorithm for tone reservation and a possible one for the active constellation extension (ACE) method. Find the latest version at www.atsc.org.

IMPACT ON COMPONENTS
ATSC 3.0’s higher PAPR will also have an impact on the components at the output of the transmitter. Even if the average power is unchanged, the higher peak power will result in higher RF voltages, potentially leading to arcs and burn-out in RF system components like filters, transmission line and antennas.

Derek Small, senior engineer with Dielectric, outlined the power handing capability of different filter designs under ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 in his NAB Show presentation, “Efficient UHF Tunable Waveguide TE10 Mode Filter.” Broadcasters want tunable filters to allow them to change channels without replacing their RF system. Most tunable filters use tunable coaxial/transitional mode cavities. They are compact compared to waveguide designs, but have greater loss.

Fig. 1: A slide from Small’s NAB Show presentation on Dielectric’s tunable waveguide filter that has lower loss than the tunable coaxial/transitional mode cavity filters and greater power handling capability. The significant probe penetration in these filters leads to higher electric field densities, making them more susceptible to breakdown with ATSC 3.0’s higher PAPR and potentially reducing the maximum power they can handle compared to ATSC 1.0.

Small and Dielectric developed a tunable waveguide filter (Fig. 1) that has lower loss than the tunable coaxial/transitional mode cavity filters and significantly greater power handling capability (Fig. 2). Henry Fries, vice president of operations with Comark, told me that the company plans to use these filters with its new Parallax transmitter.

The ATSC 3.0 COFDM signal can occupy up to 5.83 MHz of a 6 MHz channel, more than the 5.38 MHz occupied bandwidth of an ATSC 1.0 signal. Current plans for ATSC 3.0 in the United States do not change the emission mask or out-of-channel emission limits—ATSC 3.0 broadcasters will have to comply with the existing emission mask.

One way to accomplish this is to reduce the number of carriers transmitted, reducing the occupied bandwidth to 5.51 MHz. See Table 7.1 of ATSC A/322 for details. Another option is to use a more complex filter.

The same breakdown voltage concerns Small mentioned in his presentation should apply to tuners in transmission lines and parts of antennas with high electric field density. Myat has created a document that contains, among many other things, tables and formulas for calculating the average power and peak power handling capability of transmission lines. Download the PDF from www.myat.com/images/stories/pdfs/Engine.pdf. The “Peak Power Rating and Production Test Voltages” table from the document shows the peak power limit for different sized line. Note that these values are for 1:1 VSWR and do not include modulation. Peak and average power ratings will be reduced for realworld conditions!

Broadcasters looking to reach indoor antennas and portable devices will be adding elliptical polarization, increasing the amount of power in filters, transmission lines and antennas. Making sure these components can handle higher peak powers with ATSC 3.0 will help avoid costly burnouts.

The transmitter site changes required for ATSC 3.0 are small compared with those required at the studio and in viewers’ homes. With a bit of planning when changing channels for the repack or upgrading facilities, the change at the transmitter site could be as simple as loading new firmware into the exciter!

Doug Lung is vice president of Broadcast Technology, NBC/Telemundo stations. He welcomes your comments and questions. Email him atdlung@transmitter.com.

NEW YORK—Accenture recently released its predictions for things to watch for at the 2016 NAB Show, noting seven topics ranging from newly released virtual reality technology to ad blockers. TV Technology recently spoke with Accenture Executive Gavin Mann about their prognostications.

This year could see a big step forward for over-the-air television broadcasting with the development of ATSC 3.0, the next-generation broadcast standard, according to Accenture. In late March, the Advanced Television Systems Committee, tasked with developing ATSC 3.0, approved the bootstrap component of the standard. Although this marks the first part to reach standard status, it’s probably not the last for this year, with Accenture reporting that more elements of ATSC 3.0 are expected to be approved in 2016. ATSC 3.0 will make broadcasters more competitive with major digital providers like Netflix. “ATSC 3.0 will be the big disruptor for which this industry has been clamoring,” Accenture said in its report.

Gavin Mann

Also grabbing headlines recently was the release of the Oculus Rift virtual reality platform, just one of many components that has Accenture predicting VR as another major trend for 2016. The NAB Show is planning its own virtual reality pavilion at this year’s show, and Mann says “without doubt, it is going to be an increasingly important part of the overall ecosystem of consumer consumption of various format types.”

Despite all the buzz surrounding the new format, Mann does not see it as a replacement to TV, but instead, views it as a tool for future storytellers that is not yet at its end state. “What you see in the first innovation cycle is people want to show how it works,” said Mann, “but I think the future will be more interesting than that.”

The report also indicates the importance of delivering digital content, with Accenture pointing primarily to sports, and how networks’ efforts to maintain exclusivity don’t always succeed. As an example, the Accenture report described “the expansion of sports content on mobile devices and the Internet,” including the NFL’s recent partnership with Twitter on exclusive streaming rights for 10 games during the upcoming regular season.

Developments like this, as well as the emergence of OTT streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, have led many to fear for cable’s future over the last few years. However, Accenture is firmly in the camp that cable is not dead yet. “This is not the year when cable is about to die,” said Mann. “Cable is in a healthy place. Albeit, we are seeing subscription numbers go down, but it’s not going at a rate at a rate of change where the industry won’t respond to that. Again, it’s changing, but it’s not falling off a cliff.”

Accenture’s remaining predictions were that “super platforms” would help create new live broadcasters, specifically referring to services like “Facebook Live,” which allows users to watch and stream live video from mobile devices, and how such videos could soon be used by news outlets; the invasion of ad blockers threatening the digital advertising industry; and the emergence of data driven broadcast/video business.

If Accenture’s predictions come true, it certainly sounds like it will be a busy year for the media industry, but as Mann pointed out, “pace of change is faster than ever, fueled by consumer’s expectations increasing faster than ever,” calling the current state of the industry “a modern renaissance period for content."