A plan for voluntary adoption the “next-generation” television broadcasting transmission standard known as ATSC 3.0 has been proposed at the Federal Communications Commission, which represents a seminal event in the development of the standard.

The FCC today voted unanimously to allow broadcasters to voluntarily deploy the emerging “next-generation” television transmission standard known as ATSC 3.0.

Groups serving the deaf and hard-of-hearing community want to make sure that closed captioning requirements carry over to voluntary ATSC 3.0 roll outs.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is on the ATSC 3.0 bandwagon.

The National Association of Broadcasters believes that the FCC should give broadcasters some space to determine how to work with the new ATSC 3.0 standard, despite calls from MVPDs and others for the Commission to look into retransmission consent, capacity or content issues in its upcoming Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

The FCC, as expected, will vote Nov. 16 on whether to authorize broadcasters to begin offering next-generation ATSC 3.0-based over-the-air television service on a voluntary basis at its open commission meeting.

The FCC is giving commenters plenty of time to weigh in on its proposal to allow TV broadcasters to start rolling out the ATSC 3.0 next gen transmission standard.

The NAB has told the FCC that it needs to start treating broadcasters, MVPDs and OTT video providers as competitors and let broadcasters go forward with their own innovations, specifically through NextGen TV transmissions.