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The ride to next generation TV services combining broadcast with broadband, IP and mobile delivery has been bumpy, partly because of global divergence over standards. The old four-way regional split of terrestrial TV standards mattered less in the old analog days, but has come to haunt the industry as video transmission has migrated increasingly to the internet and mobile devices.

This in turn has created an existential dimension amid growing uncertainty whether Over the Air (OTA) TV has a future at all. Some broadcasters seem to have already decided OTA does not have a long-term future, such as the BBC in the light of its Director General Tim Davie’s revelation in May 2025 of a national UK plan to phase out DTT transmission in the 2030s, with all services transmitted over the internet from then onwards.

Meanwhile, a number of countries, as well as individual Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs), have stalled over migrations to the next generation of TV services generally, including the North American ATSC 3.0, which is actually referred to as NextGen TV. Such stalling is not always entirely for existential reasons, but also reflects delays either with the standards, or with roll out of critical functions.

This has been the case with three of the four regional DTT standards blocks; the Japanese-led ISDB, China’s DTMB, and the European-led DVB, which has also been widely adopted in Africa, as well as a few countries in Asia Pacific. Slow emergence of next generation standards to increase capacity, incorporate IP transmission and gear delivery towards mobile, left the door open for ATSC 3.0.

Gaining Ground In Brazil

That led to adoption of ATSC 3.0 by South Korea in 2017, after earlier veering towards DVB. Then in 2023, ATSC 3.0 won its biggest scalp with adoption by Brazil for the core of its next generation DTV+ Broadcasting System, switching from the incumbent ISDB-T. Brazil then became the only significant country to switch allegiance between DTT platforms.

Like a number of other South American countries, Brazil had gone with the Japanese ISDB standards and was influential in enhancing them for the ISDB-T International version around 2009. One change, improving transmission efficiency, was use of the H.264 video codec rather than MPEG-2, so the standard was a genuine upgrade.

This version was adopted outside Japan to cater for local requirements. Another key difference which proved important for some markets – and particularly Brazil – was the incorporation of middleware called Ginga supporting the Nested Context Language (NCL). There was also support for emerging Java based TV applications gaining traction in many countries at the time.

Ginga is an open-source software development from research institutions in Brazil, developed specifically for ISDB-T. It was commercialized by EiTV Middleware for TV and associated devices, ensuring compatibility with the country’s digital TV standards.

This was relevant for Brazil’s later switch to ATSC 3.0, because it could only be sanctioned if the platform could continue supporting interactive TV applications developed for Ginga. This was addressed by EiTV partnering with iWedia, which had developed a software stack for ATSC 3.0. Announced in August 2025, this collaboration cleared the ground for roll out of DTV+ with ATSC 3.0 at the core.

Facing Resistance

Meanwhile, ATSC 3.0 has not been enjoying that easy a ride in its native USA. It has been bogged down by patents disputes, a lack of capacity resulting from the ongoing requirement for broadcasters to simulcast in ATSC 1.0, and the reluctance of many TV makers to incorporate ATSC 3.0 tuners on cost grounds.

The tendency has been to support ATSC 3.0 only in higher end TVs, which is a significant impediment to widespread adoption. Samsung, for example, supports ATSC 3.0 in its 8K TVs, but not the lower priced 4K models. That is not much help in the USA, where there is no immediate prospect of 8K broadcasts.

This situation has improved somewhat, with many Sony TVs incorporating ATSC 3.0 tuners, and there are now a few budget models doing so too, such as the U8QG Mini-LED TV from China’s Hisense.

Yet the ATSC is still facing resistance to rushing in NextGenTV from across the industry, including broadcasters and pay TV operators, as well as consumer electronics firms concerned about the extra cost of the tuner. This came to a head in June 2025 when a coalition of six industry groups reacted against a petition from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) calling for a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0 by February 2028.

This group, including the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), Public Knowledge, NCTA, ACA Connects, American Television Alliance and LPTV Broadcasters Association, insisted transition should be voluntary and that forcing it upon consumers would impose unwelcome costs and regulations, as well as stifle innovation. The implication was that it would dissuade US companies from investing in alternative ways of reaching mobile devices.

Pros & Cons

Yet the ATSC does have one trick up its sleeve, and one which was carefully designed in from the start. This is the use of a bootstrap for discovery and identification of signals being transmitted. It allows support for different systems and signal types in future, and as a result forward compatibility, which was designed to reassure adopters of ATSC 3.0, especially outside the USA, that they will not be locked in. This was critical for South Korea’s early adoption, and also Brazil’s.

It may also help sustain ATSC 3.0 in the USA, by reassuring stations and broadcasters there that they will be able to reach mobile devices effectively, even if they do not support the standard. An ATSC technical group has recently taken a critical step on that front by developing guidance on how to incorporate 5G Broadcast delivery inside ATSC 3.0 by interleaving the former’s waveforms in the latter’s OTA signal. That would mean 5G Broadcast could be used within ATSC 3.0 to reach mobile devices.

This dovetails with the ATSC’s broader B2X (Broadcast to Everything) strategy, which clearly leans on the bootstrap signal identification. 5G Broadcast is obviously an important option to support, such that ATSC has dedicated a technical group to its interleaving.

At the same time though, 5G Broadcast has problems of its own. Its ancestors under LTE were focused squarely at mobile operators with broadcast and multicast offload in mind, as much as to facilitate delivery of sufficient high-quality video to smartphones. But the additional capacity and QoS capability of 5G opened the door to combine with existing or prospective high and low tower infrastructures to deliver linear TV services, as an alternative to the prevailing DTT options.

This aspect of 5G Broadcast was discussed by The Broadcast Bridge in February 2024, noting also that the arbiter of cellular mobile standards, 3GPP, had pitched this squarely at broadcasters. Yet the secret sauce was supposed to be that 5G Broadcast would be better matched for mobile delivery than the DTT options, precisely because it was developed by 3GPP, rather than a group oriented towards traditional TV.

But this mobile dimension received a major setback in 2025 when Qualcomm, the world’s leading maker of System on Chips (SoCs) for mobile devices, back peddled hard on 5G Broadcast. The company announced around IBC 2025 that its 5G Broadcast chips would only be available from 2028, and even then only for premium phones. That would delay its roll out further. There has been no comment from Apple regarding 5G Broadcast integration with its devices.

The European Reaction

Although not directly affecting European broadcasters, the associated sentiments have been instrumental in dampening enthusiasm for 5G Broadcast in tandem with DVB technologies as their next generation TV direction.

Enthusiasm peaked in 2023 when public broadcasters in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria signed a cooperation pact stating that the UHF 470–694 MHz frequency band would be used for 5G Broadcast. Germany’s ARD was among the leading advocates of this approach, proceeding to engage in numerous pilot projects to test distribution of TV channels over 5G Broadcast, as well as other non-TV services benefiting from mass distribution of TV channels and other services via 5G Broadcast.

Yet in July 2025, ARD abruptly pulled back by announcing it would not adopt 5G Broadcast for the time being, although it didn’t rule out adoption at a later date – perhaps when chips become widely available for mobile devices.

This comes as other European countries have also rowed back, even if they are still in principle committed to 5G Broadcast. The Netherlands remains among the most committed, being currently in the middle of a one-year field trial that was unveiled alongside a demonstration at IBC 2025. But even there the trail has cooled, although it seems European broadcasters lack a clear alternative.

New Developments

While ATSC abandoned its second generation ATSC 2.0 around a decade ago, largely for being too little too late with ATSC 3.0 development already well advanced, DVB-T2 has served the industry well, with sufficient capacity. With OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) it offered enough capacity for HD and even 4K transmission over established infrastructures. Various DVB innovations, such as DVB-I (Interactive) have reinforced DVB-T2, enabling broadcast/broadband integration.

But the strongest repercussions of Qualcomm’s row-back could be in India, whose indigenous D2M (Digital to Mobile) technology was one of the takeaways at IBC 2025. It is aligned with the country’s “Make in India” campaign which is designed to stimulate indigenous manufacturing and technology development, and features a chip set called the SL3000 developed by Saankhya Labs and now owned by Tejas Networks.

Like 5G Broadcast, this enables mobile devices to access live TV, as well as emergency notifications and educational material, without internet access or indeed cellular connectivity. It has been tested by national broadcaster Prasar Bharati and is being integrated with devices from Indian smartphone makers such as HMD Global and Lava.

However, India is also set on supporting global standards in order to further its aim to become a D2M leader, especially if this emerges as the primary vehicle for delivering TV to mobile devices rather than traditional OTA infrastructure. Prasar Bharati had been evaluating 5G Broadcast, but that cause has been set back by Qualcomm’s reticence.

It could open the door for ATSC 3.0 chips given the flexibility and forward compatibility enabled by that bootstrap for system and signal discovery. That would be a big scalp for ATSC 3.0 at a time when the future of hybrid TV and video services is still up in the air.