TV broadcasters to plunder some of 5G's fatTV broadcasters to plunder some of 5G's fat

EdgeBeam Wireless is a new joint venture among four of the nation's biggest TV broadcasters that hopes to offer wireless services including automotive connectivity and improved GPS connections.

That kind of venture could cut into the connected car business of 5G operators like AT&T and Verizon. Indeed, AT&T alone counts around 55 million connected cars on its network.

EdgeBeam could also create challenges for companies like NextNav and Iridium, which are pursuing the same Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) market for GPS improvements that EdgeBeam is eyeing.

More broadly though, EdgeBeam has implications for 5G network operators that are hungry for more spectrum. That's because some federal regulators have suggested holding another incentive auction of TV broadcasters' spectrum, in order to redistribute that spectrum to 5G network operators.

If EdgeBeam gains traction, it could help fortify the business prospects of its founders: E.W. Scripps Company, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair. That could potentially reduce those companies' desire to release more spectrum into an FCC incentive auction.

"We believe the creation of EdgeBeam allows all of us to create the highest and best use of spectrum, and I would imagine we each would want to hold onto the spectrum that gives us such great nationwide reach," an EdgeBeam representative wrote in response to Light Reading questions on the incentive auction topic.

On the other hand, EdgeBeam could potentially hasten TV broadcasters' overall shift to ATSC 3.0 technology. And that could ultimately be a good thing for 5G network operators because the technology is more spectrally efficient. Thus, TV broadcasters could use the move to ATSC 3.0 to free up spectrum for an incentive auction.

Indeed, the technological precursor to ATSC 3.0 – ATSC 1.0 – was indirectly tied to the FCC's first incentive auction because it allowed broadcasters to relinquish spectrum they no longer needed for their analog broadcasts.

EdgeBeam's pitch

In an announcement at this week's CES show, E.W. Scripps Company, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair said their new EdgeBeam joint venture "will provide expansive, reliable and secure data delivery services" using the ATSC 3.0 standard. The companies pointed to three specific opportunities:

"EdgeBeam will be able to deliver data across the country to any civilian or military device with an ATSC 3.0 receiver, such as cars and trucks, drones, marine vessels, phones, tablets and television sets," according to EdgeBeam's release. Joint venture members are currently hunting for a CEO to lead the operation.

'Infinite' speeds

To be clear, TV broadcasters like Nexstar and Sinclair have been hinting at the business prospects of ATSC 3.0 for years. For example, Sinclair last year booted up Broadspan, a datacasting platform for CDNs and others, that's underpinned by ATSC 3.0.

Separately, startup Peak3 is building a national IoT network that taps into ATSC 3.0 spectrum. Just this week the company announced an ATSC 3.0-enabled service with HotEdge for melting ice off roofs.

EdgeBeam is "great news for the industry as Peak3's role is to develop and manage the customer acquisition and journey," Christopher McGhay, the startup's chief strategy and revenue officer, told Light Reading.

But what exactly are the performance characteristics of EdgeBeam's network? When questioned about the network's speeds, an EdgeBeam representative told Light Reading that "we don't really think about competing on speed in that way because our networks are 'always on' and scale to an infinite number of devices. We would say that our 'speeds' are infinite."

So... it's reasonable to assume EdgeBeam speeds are slow enough that the companies don't want to talk about them.

(After this article was published, EdgeBeam offered a bit more detail on its expected network performance: "A single ATSC 3.0 signal can deliver up to 25 Mbit/s of usable data across its coverage area, but the key advantage lies in its ability to reach all receivers within that footprint at the same time, with no degradation as more devices connect.")

The ATSC 3.0 angle

ATSC 3.0 is the TV broadcasting industry's next-gen, IP-based broadcast signaling standard and represents an upgrade to the ATSC 1.0 standard widely used today.

According to the Consumer Technology Association trade group, 3 million ATSC 3.0 TV sets shipped in 2021, 3.4 million in 2022, and 3.8 million in 2023. That's around 9% of all TVs that shipped in 2023.

On the transmission side, TV broadcasters currently cover about 76% of the 120 million or so TV households in the US with ATSC 3.0 – or about two-thirds of the country.

Finally, EdgeBeam is a business-to-business company focused on ATSC 3.0. NextGenTV is the consumer-facing brand used by TV manufacturers to refer to ATSC 3.0.

EdgeBeam officials don't expect the new joint venture to affect other ATSC 3.0 efforts like Peak3 and Broadspan.

Another incentive auction

Hovering over the TV industry's transition from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0 is the prospect of another 5G incentive auction.

The FCC's first incentive auction ended in 2017 with almost $20 billion in winning bids. T-Mobile ultimately scooped up most of those spectrum licenses for its 5G network. In that auction, TV broadcasters were paid for the spectrum that they decided to release into the auction.

Brendan Carr – President-elect Trump's pick to head the FCC – last year endorsed the idea of another incentive auction.

"We are a little shy on spectrum right now," he said, explaining that the FCC doesn't have much spectrum to release into the commercial cellular industry. That situation rankles the likes of AT&T and T-Mobile, which have displayed a bottomless appetite for additional spectrum licenses.

Carr has also signaled that he might be willing to encourage a speedy transition from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0. That's important considering the FCC has said TV broadcasters should wait until 2027 at the earliest to begin shuttering their ATSC 1.0 networks.

The transition to ATSC 3.0 is just one of many issues buffeting the TV broadcasting industry. Another is consumers' increasing shift from linear broadcast TV to streaming TV. Yet another may well be Trump himself, since he has threatened to revoke TV broadcasters' spectrum licenses for news programs he perceives as unfair.

"While incoming Trump administration officials ... have all endorsed the idea of forcing broadcasters to return their licenses and have the government sell the spectrum to reduce the government debt, we don't think this outcome is likely," wrote Blair Levin, a policy advisor to New Street Research and a former high-level FCC official, in a recent note to investors.

Article updated January 8 with additional information about EdgeBeam's expected network performance.