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Next-generation broadcasting promises many rewards for viewers and for broadcasters, and mobile broadcasting in the U.S. is an exciting future to look forward to as the transition to ATSC 3.0 progresses, but we won’t get there if decisions are made out of sequence.
Some very thoughtful people in broadcasting are intrigued by the buzzword of “5G Broadcast” as a direction that U.S. television broadcasters ought to go, even as millions have been invested by stations and consumers in upgrades to the ATSC 3.0 system (see Preston Padden’s March 11 Open Mike here).
A pragmatic examination of the realities is warranted.
First, no consumer television receivers currently support 5G Broadcast, and while proponents of 5G Broadcast anticipate the arrival of compatible mobile silicon chips, there is no clear path for integrating this technology into TV sets. This means that if 5G Broadcast were to become a practical way to reach mobile devices, broadcasters would still need to use another system, such as ATSC 3.0, to continue reaching the viewing public using television sets for vital news, graphic emergency messages and enhanced entertainment.
Additionally, the current broadcast spectrum constraints faced by U.S. broadcasters make it impractical to launch mobile services during the ongoing channel-sharing transition period. Mobile broadcasting — regardless of the standard — requires significant bandwidth, and broadcasters will have major challenges allocating the necessary capacity until ATSC 1.0 transmissions are at least largely phased out.
The cart does need to come after the horse, after all:
Mobile services cannot be deployed at scale until broadcasters reclaim