WASHINGTON—When the FCC gave the green light for ATSC 3.0 in 2017, the focus was on improving television broadcasting by combining IP with RF to bring a new range of consumer applications, better reception, and enhanced picture and audio quality. While there were discussions of datacasting and enterprise solutions at the time, the idea that the standard—also branded as "NextGen TV"—had enormous potential beyond traditional television was still nascent.
Nine years later, any doubt that ATSC 3.0 could impact U.S. communications infrastructure has been erased. That reality took center stage during the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, where three of the six sessions focused entirely on applications outside the traditional broadcast environment.
Nevertheless, the standard remains in a state of policy limbo. The broadcast industry is actively petitioning the FCC to set a definitive sunset date for ATSC 1.0 so stations can drop the burden of simulcasting and unleash the full potential of ATSC 3.0.
ATSC President Madeleine Noland aptly characterized this state of transition in her opening speech.
"The current U.S. situation, as one broadcaster in this room put it, feels kind of like 'the worst of both worlds' as we straddle between a 25-year-old technology with ATSC 1.0 and the tremendous opportunities in front of us with ATSC 3.0."
Maintaining Perspective
Although NextGen TV sets have been on the consumer market since late 2020—with approximately 18 million units sold according to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)—widespread consumer adoption and enthusiasm have lagged. Noland looked to history to contextualize the current conundrum.
"We have to put these things in perspective—the issues we face today are similar to the issues of yesterday," Noland noted. "But perhaps more urgent, as technology and consumer habits are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, we don't quite have the luxury of a decade-plus to get things right in this media landscape."
Despite sluggish hardware adoption, Noland touted the operational progress broadcasters have made with the standard.
"My estimate is that 1.3 million people in the United States today are enjoying High Dynamic Range (HDR) over the air for free for the first time; over half a million are enjoying Dolby Atmos, 1.2 million have access to interactive services, and over a half a million of those can use 'Start Over TV,'" she said. "This is today for free in the United States over the air for the first time ever. So, these numbers are growing, and growing fast."
Shifting the Bipartisan Conversation
In a fireside chat with Noland, National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) President Curtis LeGeyt praised the technology's momentum but offered a cautious perspective on the timeline for an FCC regulatory decision. In February, the NAB asked the commission to mandate an ATSC 1.0 sunset in the top 75 markets by the end of 2028, with the remaining markets following by the end of 2030.
We understand that at any particular moment the FCC has a lot of competing priorities, and we need to ensure that the nationwide deployment of ATSC 3.0 is at the very top of that list.
Curtis LeGeyt, NAB President/CEO
"We understand that at any particular moment the FCC has a lot of competing priorities, and we need to ensure that the nationwide deployment of ATSC 3.0 is at the very top of that list," LeGeyt said. "Shifting the conversation from whether ATSC 3.0 is going to be the standard of the future to how we are going to get there is tactical, given the Washington environment we are in."
LeGeyt also emphasized the rare bipartisan support the standard has maintained on Capitol Hill.
"In a very polarized Washington environment, ATSC 3.0 doesn't register Republican or Democrat; it registers local," he said. "And that's why you've got such positive remarks—maybe emphasizing different features of the technology—from each of the commissioners, as well as the Chairman... this is a transition that's going to need to transcend politics."
BPS Spin-off
LeGeyt used the event to announce that the NAB has launched Merkhet Solutions, an independent company focused on the commercial deployment of the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS). BPS utilizes the NextGen TV standard to deliver precise terrestrial timing and location signals over existing broadcast towers, functioning as a vital backup to satellite-based GPS.
"BPS represents a powerful intersection of innovation, public safety, and opportunity for broadcasters," LeGeyt said in a statement. "Launching Merkhet Solutions is the next step in commercializing this technology and ensuring it reaches the critical infrastructure operators who need it most, while continuing to create meaningful long-term opportunities for local stations."
Speaking to attendees, LeGeyt added that BPS offers an opportunity to solve a massive public policy vulnerability while generating an entirely new revenue stream to help accelerate the 3.0 transition.
“We made the determination that for BPS to recognize its full potential—that we at NAB certainly believe that it has, and the NAB member companies on our board of directors believe that it has—not only to solve this important public policy issue, but also as a potential revenue stream for broadcasters, and as an accelerant to ATSC 3.0,” he said.
Sam Matheny, who previously led the NAB’s internal BPS initiatives, has been named CEO of the spin-off.
"BPS solves a problem we can no longer afford to ignore: an entire economy and national security posture resting on a single, contested signal from space," Matheny said. "We built BPS at NAB because broadcast infrastructure is uniquely suited to deliver assured terrestrial timing at scale. We're launching Merkhet Solutions because the time to operationalize this technology is now."
Matheny updated the audience on real-world testing of the system in the Washington, D.C. area.
"We are at an actual critical infrastructure site—that was one of the requirements," Matheny explained. "Our partner is Dominion Energy. We are at one of the largest power substations on the East Coast, and we have put our leader-follower, self-synchronizing network in place with them."
Plans will initially focus on regional rollouts. "Let's do more relationships like we have with Dominion Energy, where we can hear directly from critical infrastructure partners on how they want to use it... and how we can best provide BPS as a complement to their GPS," Matheny said.
Dr. Andrew Hansen, a prominent expert in navigation and timing who was instrumental in developing three global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), was profuse in his praise of BPS, calling the initial testing data "stunning."
"I am jealous—I've lived in standards my entire professional career, and 3.0 is a good one," Hansen remarked. "GPS was a gift to the world; the idea that you can synchronize time around the world to ones of nanoseconds shook physical principles. The idea that we can now do this to ones of nanoseconds with BPS layered on ATSC 3.0 is remarkable."
Improving the Viewer Experience
While enterprise infrastructure dominated the headlines, the "Better TV" session focused on local enhancements, including interactive applications, content curation, and localized accessibility features.
Jason Quinn, director of engineering at New Mexico PBS, highlighted how the technology solves deep structural communication issues in rural, tribal areas. Covering the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, the network is working with partners Ateme and Heartland Video Systems to deploy real-time AI translations and multi-language captioning.
"A lot of unique challenges that communities are facing have nothing to do with broadcast television, but have everything to do with the transfer of information," Quinn said. Recent over-the-air tests successfully broadcast simultaneous Spanish and Vietnamese AI-translated caption tracks alongside standard English.
On the commercial datacasting side, Joe Fabiano, CTO of Edge Beam Wireless—a joint venture backed by E.W. Scripps, Gray Media, Nexstar, and Sinclair—updated attendees on their tech pipeline.
"We're helping ATSC advance the standards to bring full IP networking, routing, and peering capabilities into the standard," Fabiano said, noting that Edge Beam's ultimate goal is to seamlessly blend into background consumer ecosystems. "We're not creating hardware and platforms for the purposes of becoming a hardware manufacturer. We're doing it for the purposes of bridging, so that we disappear into consumer electronics."
The Race Against Wireless Competitors
The transition isn't without immediate external competitive threats. During a panel focused on Advanced Emergency Information (AEI), So Vang, vice president of emerging technology at Sinclair subsidiary ONE Media 3.0, issued a blunt warning regarding impending features from the commercial wireless sector.
"We're talking about keeping broadcasters relevant," Vang cautioned. "If wireless alerting is going to do exactly what AEI is doing, we better step up and do it... The wireless industry is moving ahead. They will very likely roll out features like AEI—not with full interactivity, but at least with the ability to get a photo or a map to the handset. There's a live FCC proceeding on that."
Edward Czarnecki, vice president of global and government affairs at Digital Alert Systems, reminded the room that broadcasters possess a distinct structural advantage. Unlike wireless carriers, who hold blanket legal indemnification from emergency alert liabilities, broadcasters operate under strict statutory local obligations and hold far superior delivery capacity.
"AEI is an informational service, not an alert service," Czarnecki noted. "We can do a lot more with languages, accessibility, and multimedia than the wireless industry can because of our bandwidth and the versatility of the app environment."
Chicken and Egg Redux
NAB President LeGeyt compared the current 3.0 landscape to the classic "chicken-and-egg" hardware vs. content dilemma that defined the original digital transition decades ago—only this time, the stakes are exponentially higher.
"In order for consumers to see the value proposition of the ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV experience, we need to be implementing and deploying new features that are going to make this really attractive," LeGeyt said. "And that goes beyond just a great picture. It's all the features that, frankly, may have been an innovation story 10 years ago, but really are just table stakes to compete in this media landscape today."
The ATSC concluded the day by announcing the recipients of its two most coveted awards. Mark Aitken was named recipient of the Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal and Julia Kenyon of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) received the 2026 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.
