Every year at NAB, the conversation centers on what's new at the production layer, cameras, switchers, encoders, cloud playout. And every year, connectivity is treated as the assumed foundation: the thing that's supposed to just work so everything else can shine.
That assumption is costing broadcasters.
The broadcast industry has spent a decade investing in software-defined workflows, IP infrastructure and cloud-native production architectures, and yet many organizations are still routing that chain over connectivity infrastructure that hasn't kept pace. The weakest link isn't the switcher or the encoder. It's often the network path between the field and air.
This is the problem the Field to Air demonstration at NAB 2026 was designed to expose, and solve, in plain view on the show floor.
What "Field to Air" Actually Is
Field to Air is a live, end-to-end broadcast workflow running in real time with six production partners: Dejero, Eutelsat, Ross Video, Matrox Video, Clear-Com, GlobalM and Cuez. Everything is live, connected, and dependent on the reliability of the network beneath it.
When you build a workflow with the network at the center, the production chain changes character. Redundancy is built in, not bolted on. Failover becomes invisible. The field-to-air chain stops being a series of fragile handoffs and becomes a single, resilient system.
The Hidden Cost of "Good Enough" Connectivity
Bonded cellular was a meaningful step forward, but bonded cellular is not the same as intelligent network blending. Where bonded approaches aggregate paths and switch when one fails, intelligent blending simultaneously uses all available connections, cellular, satellite, Wi-Fi, fixed-line, weighting each dynamically based on real-time conditions. Eutelsat's OneWeb LEO constellation extends into locations where terrestrial networks are unavailable or under stress.
The practical effect is a connectivity layer that actively maintains signal quality rather than reacting after degradation occurs. For live production teams, that's the difference between infrastructure they can plan around and infrastructure they're constantly compensating for.
A Question Worth Asking
Have we been building sophisticated production architectures on a connectivity foundation that isn't ready to carry them? In too many cases, the honest answer is yes.
The story doesn't start when the camera goes up. It starts when the network is ready.
