Point/Counterpoint: 5G Broadcast vs. NextGen TV
Industry veterans Preston Padden and Mark Aitken share their views on which standard should drive future of U.S. television

Point: 5G Broadcast Connects Stations to the Mobile Future
The press is filled with stories predicting the demise of linear broadcast television. And certainly, it is true that we face many obstacles, including streaming services taking our viewers and advertisers, cable cord-cutting eroding our retransmission revenues and our own networks climbing on the streaming bandwagon.
But what if there was a new broadcast standard that held the promise of connecting broadcasters not only to television receivers, but also to 5G wireless smartphones and tablets, opening a whole new market to our transmission? The good news is that there is such a standard and it is called 5G Broadcast. And because 5G Broadcast (unlike ATSC 3.0) was adopted as part of the 3G PP 5G standard, it holds the key to our future. All we have to do is join large portions of the world in adopting it.
I have the greatest respect for my longtime friend Mark Aitken, who has advocated with great skill to try to make ATSC 3.0 the American standard for next-gen TV. And I have great admiration for Sinclair and its principal, David Smith. David is probably the only station group owner who has seated himself at a bench and actually built a UHF transmitter.
Let me state upfront that no one is paying me to write this article and that I do not own a single share of stock in Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, mobile chip makers or phone manufacturing companies. My investments are in boring municipal bonds with no relation whatsoever to the television or telecom industries.
Worldwide Standard
The broadcasting industry is transitioning from ATSC 1.0 to a next-generation standard. The two principal choices available to us are ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast. An international standards body called 3GPP sets the standards for all cellular devices in the world and all of the major cellular device manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, etc.) build their devices to comply with 3GPP. 3GPP-compliant devices only receive signals that are part of the 3GPP family of 5G global standards, meaning that broadcasters who transition to the 5G Broadcast standard will be able to transmit directly to the hundreds of millions of next generation 5G smartphones and tablets.
With several large countries committing to 5G Broadcast, I expect TV set manufacturers to incorporate 5G Broadcast receivers to meet marketplace demand — no government mandates necessary.”
By contrast, ATSC 3.0 is not a part of the 3GPP family of cellular standards and therefore cannot and will not be able to be received by smartphones and tablets compliant with the 3GPP standards. For this reason, Sinclair and others tried diligently to get ATSC 3.0 approved by 3GPP as part of its standards. Ultimately, 3GPP refused to incorporate ATSC 3.0 into its standard.
LTE-based 5G Broadcast is better-suited for integration with 3GPP modems because it reuses nearly all existing LTE/5G components and hardware, whereas ATSC 3.0 requires different implementations across critical building blocks.
So far, public and private broadcast operators in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Estonia, Spain and the Czech Republic came forward and announced their intentions to deploy the 5G Broadcast standard. And there is continuing interest in 5G Broadcast in Malaysia, China and Brazil, with active trials and evaluation of the technology. With several large countries committing to 5G Broadcast, I expect TV-set manufacturers to incorporate 5G Broadcast receivers to meet marketplace demand—no government mandates necessary.
Because of trial broadcasts around the world—including a Federal Communications Commission-approved trial by low-power station WWOO in the Boston market—we don’t need to speculate about whether 5G Broadcast can be received by 5G smartphones.
Simply Stated, It Works!
So American full-power TV broadcasters face the following choice: Do you want to transition to a next-gen standard that broadens your market to include reception by 5G cellular devices, or do you want to transition to a standard that cannot be received by those devices?
The question answers itself.
Advocates for ATSC 3.0 try mightily to think of applications that could make up for their standard’s lack of access to 3GPP cellular devices. They argue that car manufacturers will go to the expense of adding ATSC 3.0 receivers to their cars to receive software downloads. But since all cars (even my low-tech minivan) already have 5G transceivers that serve that function, that seems very unlikely. Or they argue that an ATSC 3.0-based new GPS system will be the key to our future. That seems a real stretch, and certainly no substitute for gaining access to 3GPP cellular devices.
So why is Sinclair pushing so hard for ATSC 3.0? The simple answer is that they have a conflict—not bad or evil—just a conflict. Sinclair owns a vast portion of the intellectual property that makes up the ATSC 3.0 standard. That means that they stand to reap a fortune in royalties if American full-power broadcasters adopt ATSC 3.0. All other TV broadcasters can make their choice without being burdened by that conflict!
In my opinion the only thing that can save broadcasting from extinction is to transition to 5G Broadcast and transmit directly to both TV receivers and 3GPP cellular devices and thereby join the mobile future.
All we have to do is do it!

Former broadcast government relations executive
Reflections vs. Illumination: Choosing the Right Path for Broadcast
Bold claims are easy to make, especially from seasoned showmen. But if you’re going to listen to them, it’s best to keep one hand on your wallet. Advocates of 5G Broadcast like to make impressive claims about what 5G Broadcast is and what it can do. So, to avoid confusion, before discussing the relative merits of NextGen TV (or ATSC 3.0) and 5G Broadcast, it’s important to clarify one thing that 5G Broadcast is not.
First and foremost, it is not a near-term path for broadcasters to get their signals into mobile devices. The 5G Broadcast Barkers make much of the fact that 5G Broadcast is already a 3GPP standard. But what they don’t tell you is that this isn’t self-executing. Currently, no consumer device can receive 5G Broadcast signals. Not one.
To actually get a 5G Broadcast signal into a phone in a consumer’s hands, manufacturers would need to agree to install broadcast band antennas and new radio frequency filtering and front ends in mobile devices, which is exactly what they would need to do to get ATSC 3.0 signals into a phone in a consumer’s hands. One difference? India’s mobile manufacturers are already supporting ATSC 3.0 phones. Right now. As you read this.
B2X Is Coming
In any event, the standardization of the next ATSC 3.0 release, currently referred to as “Broadcast to Everything (B2X),” will accelerate the availability of 3.0 receivers in mobile devices. B2X is a backwards-compatible evolution of ATSC 3.0 that harmonizes with 3GPP standards—including Release 17 and anticipated extensions—providing a true path toward converged broadcast-broadband delivery without abandoning the robust ATSC 3.0 foundation.
It’s misleading to suggest that broadcast television could become instantly scalable just by virtue of being ‘part of 3GPP.’ ”
So if 5G Broadcast doesn’t offer a faster path to getting broadcast to mobile, what does it offer?
Well, for one thing, 5G Broadcast offers measurably inferior performance. This is partly because it’s not even really 5G. It’s 4G/LTE. In fact, I don’t know why I’m even calling it “5G” Broadcast at this point.
You don’t need to take my word for 4G Broadcast’s technical inferiority. Last summer, Brazil engaged in a lengthy, thoughtful process involving extensive laboratory and field testing to select the ATSC 3.0 physical layer as the over-the-air transmission system for the country’s upgrade to next-generation terrestrial broadcast services.
In response to its original call for proposals, Brazil’s Fórum do Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital Terrestre (SBTVD) received 31 responses from 21 different organizations worldwide, resulting in 30 candidate technologies. This included four over-the-air physical layer candidate technologies: Advanced ISDB-T, ATSC 3.0, 5G Broadcast, and DTMB-A, all of which were subjected to both laboratory and field testing.
The full results of the first rounds of lab tests are available at https://forumsbtvd.org.br/ under the TV 3.0 Project tab. SBTVD determined that it was necessary to conduct further lab and field testing between the top two candidate standards, Advanced ISDB-T and ATSC 3.0, before making a final recommendation. The full results of the final round of lab tests are also available at the URL referenced above.
So Much More to Offer
Here’s the short version of the lab results: ATSC 3.0 outperformed every other candidate standard and was unanimously recommended by SBTVD. ATSC 3.0 demonstrated greater spectral efficiency, with higher throughput for both fixed indoor reception and high-speed mobile reception. (Somehow the so-called 5G Broadcast advocates never mention that their mobile standard doesn’t work well with devices that are actually mobile.)
But for our purposes today, it’s particularly worth noting that 4G Broadcast didn’t even make the cut for the final evaluation in field testing. That’s right—5G Broadcast advocates are trying to convince broadcasters to adopt an also-ran technology as the future of the industry.
It’s misleading to suggest broadcast television could become instantly scalable just by virtue of being “part of 3GPP.” The broadcast mode of 5G—FeMBMS or 5G Broadcast—is not implemented in those hundreds of millions of phones. It’s a separate mode, with its own antenna, filtering, LNA, silicon and other required components and software stack—none of which is found in current consumer devices.
ATSC 3.0 has so much more to offer and is so much further ahead in the game at this point. Broadcasters are already using ATSC 3.0 to deliver superior pictures and sound to viewers. Broadcasters have spent years working on ATSC 3.0, developing features like broadcast applications that allow broadcasters deploying NextGen TV to offer new interactive features and benefits, such as enhanced content, program restart, hyperlocal weather and programmatic advertising.
These applications also create an easy pathway to extending content created for digital platforms into the broadcast experience. And broadcasters are already developing new business models that will allow the industry to diversify revenue streams and thrive in the decades ahead.
The future of broadcast isn’t about shiny distractions—it’s about illumination. ATSC 3.0 isn’t just a standard, it’s a system designed to serve the public, empower broadcasters and evolve with technology. It’s on the air. It’s in consumer devices. It works. And if you attended the recent ATSC Next Gen Broadcast Conference … it’s all about mobile! While others chase hypotheticals, ATSC 3.0 delivers real value today—and lights the path to tomorrow.

Senior Vice President, Advanced Technology, Sinclair Broadcast Group Architect and Advocate for the Future of Broadcast
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