WASHINGTON—A new filing with the Federal Communications Commission indicates that lawyers for HC2 Broadcasting Holdings (HC2) had a videoconference on August 25 with Allison Howell, legal advisor to Chairman Carr as part of the company’s ongoing push for 5G broadcasting.
During the call, they discussed the status of HC2’s pending Petition for Rulemaking asking the Commission to initiate a rulemaking to authorize the 5G Broadcast transmission standard for Low Power Television (LPTV) stations on a voluntary basis. During the meeting they also presented slides laying out a variety of reasons why the agency should move forward with issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to authorize the 5G Broadcast standard.
In 2025, the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau sought public comments on a Petition for Rulemaking from HC2 Broadcasting Holdings that asked the regulator to allow low-power television (LPTV) stations to use the 5G Broadcast transmission standard as an alternative to the currently authorized ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0.
HC2, which owns and operates more than 250 LPTV stations nationwide, filed the request March 28, 2025. FCC received 29 comments and 8 reply comments.
The proposal was greeted with favorable comments from the LPTV industry while some broadcasters and the ATSC raised concerns.
In the slide presentation, HC2 laid out a number of policy reasons for authorizing 5G broadcasts, including:
- 5G broadcast will be available directly to viewers on ubiquitous mobile devices once enabled – cannot be more local than wherever the viewer happens to be
- It offers expanded public safety and location capabilities with a “resiliency layer”
- Programming services will be free to air, with no digital rights management or paywalls
- It provides expanded spectrum for 5G uses
- Opens opportunities for LPTV stations to offer enhanced programming, datacasting, and connectivity
- The proposal is completely voluntary and would let LPTV stations choose 1.0, 3.0 or 5G
- 5G broadcasting requires no tuner mandate and raises no MVPD carriage issues.
The full slide deck backing 5G broadcasting proposals is available here.
