With the Federal Communications Commission rules for an auction of at least the congressionally mandated 100 MHz of C-band spectrum expected as soon as July, many broadcasters had a laser-beam focus on how best to proceed with signal contribution and distribution alternatives during the 2026 NAB Show.
A breakfast event organized by The Hive Group, a public relations and creative agency headquartered in McLean, Va., on behalf of LTN, shed a great deal of light on the issues and alternatives from both the broadcaster and vendor points of view. For the purposes of this column, I’ll focus on the former.
Brad Cheney, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports, moderated a panel discussion about the challenges of living with less C-band spectrum. Panelists included David Johnson, senior vice president of technology at The Walt Disney Co., Alastair Hamilton, senior vice president of distribution, engineering and architecture at Fox, and Ken Fuller, vice president of distribution and technology operations at Paramount/CBS.
While video of the event posted to YouTube is available, panelists made several points worth calling attention to here.
There are multiple ingredients to success, including quality, reliability and availability, that must match what broadcasters have today in C-band. What each broadcaster ultimately chooses to do will include a mix of technologies. “There is not one silver bullet solution that gives us what we have today,” Fuller said. Finding what’s right will require “a testing curve” and a “learning curve.”
Matching C-band reliability is a big job. As things stand today, broadcasters have 99.999% C-band reliability. Disney has a lot of experience using non-satellite fiber IP and the public internet. That provides it with a good basis for comparison with C-band. “The primary challenge there is, it’s not five 9s,” said Johnson. “When you think about five 9s compared to four 9s, that’s four minutes difference in a 30-day period.” That translates into a “significant difference in quality and reliability that we need to solve for.”
Packet recovery via the internet is concerning. Some alternatives to C-band involve multiple transport paths, such as Ku-band with internet backup for dropped packets. After looking at nearly 200 major markets, Fox found ISP internet outages to be “quite alarming,” said Hamilton. “Some major markets were down for hours and hours.”
Distribution to small MVPDs will be a challenge. Taken together, Disney, Fox, Paramount/CBS, Warner Bros. and other major broadcasters deliver more than 10 Gbps of content to MVPD partners. That’s not a problem for the largest players with fiber connectivity. But the 10% of MVPDs that are smaller operators is “the bit that worries me,” said Hamilton. “I think we are going to have to get creative to service those.”
Opex reimbursement will be key. Unlike the last C-band auction, maintaining service won’t simply be a matter of replacing capital equipment. Recurring operational expenses for alternatives to C-band will be a major factor. “The blanket statement…is you [government reimbursement funds] will have to pay for our Opex for 10 years,” Fuller said. “Now, what does that mean? We don’t know yet.”
We will be holding a TV Tech Talk webinar July 29 on the ramifications of the C-band auction and available alternatives. Rebecca Hanson, director-general of the North American Broadcasters Association, will be our featured speaker. I am moderating.
