5G Broadcast Petition Seen as Either Save for LPTV or Industry Exit

“At the end of the day, many see this as an opportunity for low-powers in an otherwise very depressed environment,” said Les Levi, managing director of HC2, the largest owner of U.S. LPTV stations, with more than 230. “What they’re saying is, ‘We want to be excluded from having to support free-to-air broadcast,’” said Mark Aitken, Sinclair's senior vice president-advanced technology.

HC2’s petition asked the FCC to authorize LPTV stations to voluntarily shift to transmitting 5G broadcast signals. Under the current rules, stations must request an experimental license to transmit 5G broadcast. Signals broadcast in the standard can be received by mobile devices -- including cellphones -- that use Qualcomm chips and the proper antennas. Qualcomm has partnered with LPTV broadcasters to develop the technology. “Because 5G Broadcast uses existing mobile communications technology, ensuring reception by virtually all 5G-capable mobile devices, programming content can be delivered to mobile devices” without needing a dongle or specialized chip, the petition said. The proposal wouldn’t require LPTV stations to take up 5G broadcast and doesn’t involve a tuner mandate for devices. NAB recently pushed the FCC to mandate ATSC 3.0 tuners in new TVs.

ATSC 3.0 advocates have largely been unsuccessful in getting the technology into U.S. cellphones, though Sinclair and Saankhya Labs have launched a 3.0 mobile device program in India. In the U.S., there are more than 320 million handsets in circulation and a “very entrenched 5G infrastructure,” Levi said. “The ability to reach mobile devices” is a key feature of 5G broadcast. “Probably 60% of smartphone users can watch video on their phones. So, you know, it's almost become tantamount to a TV set.” 5G broadcast employs the widely used 3rd Generation Partnership Project standard, and broadcasters in Europe are pushing for the first commercial networks using the standard to go live in 2027.

Along with video, 5G broadcast would allow LPTV stations to offer efficient datacasting to mobile devices, similar to 3.0. “Beyond programming, 5G Broadcast can deliver large-scale datacasting services such as software updates to vehicle fleets and traffic and transportation information, without congesting traditional mobile networks,” HC2's petition said.

Under the proposal, LPTV broadcasters using 5G broadcast would offer one unencrypted SD video stream intended to satisfy the FCC’s requirements for broadcasters. It would be free but receivable only by devices that can receive 5G broadcast signals, which doesn’t include most current televisions.

However, the petition suggested that the FCC also seek comment “on whether all 6 MHz of LPTV spectrum could be exclusively devoted to datacasting without the need for a free-to-air signal.” Freeing LPTV stations from their broadcast obligations would serve the public interest because many users prefer mobile devices to TVs, and it would maximize the money the FCC collects from its 5% annual fee on ancillary services such as datacasting, HC2 said.

The petition’s pitch to allow LPTV stations to stop offering a free video signal is seen by some broadcast industry critics as the true eventual goal for HC2 and other 5G broadcast supporters. “They want to be datacasters” rather than broadcasters, an LPTV industry official told us. “The whole established purpose of LPTV spectrum was to provide very local television,” Aitken said. Levi said he doesn’t see 5G broadcast as a competitor, and 3.0 is “an elegant technology.”

At NAB Show 2025, Aitken, a longtime ATSC 3.0 advocate, is scheduled to represent that standard in a live debate against 5G advocates held by the LPTV group the Advanced Television Broadcast Alliance. The alliance declined to comment for this story.

In an interview, Aitken compared the 5G broadcast push to previous unsuccessful efforts by LPTV groups to persuade the FCC to allow LPTV stations to provide their spectrum for other uses (see 1708110050). Aitken said that ATSC 3.0 is capable of transmitting a clearer signal to mobile devices, and that 5G broadcast is misleading marketing, because it actually uses 4G LTE technology. HC2’s petition said preliminary results from stations testing 5G broadcast “confirm that 5G Broadcast reception from on-site trial receivers has been excellent, with strong signal reception as far as 20 or more miles away from the transmission site.” Reception “remained consistently strong while traveling more than 60 miles per hour on the highway, with clear audio,” it said. Aitken noted that it would be better for the ATSC 3.0 transition if “all the boats are paddling in the same direction.”

LPTV broadcasting as an industry needs a boost, Levi said. The programming of smaller digital networks used to be a significant source of revenue for LPTV stations, but that programming has increasingly shifted to full-power multicast channels, he said. Cocola Broadcasting CEO Gary Cocola, who owns several LPTV stations, said LPTV revenue is now barely enough to keep the lights on. “When you consider paying rent to American Tower to be at a site every month, paying your power bill, transmission costs to keep the transmitters on the air, costs to have an engineer to go up and service your transmitter,” Cocola said. “When you add up all the cost to do that today and then the kind of income that's available to you to keep the thing on the air, it’s a tough way to stay alive.”

The LPTV Broadcasters' Association has enthusiastically endorsed HC2’s petition, but some LPTV owners told us they aren’t certain about the new tech. Cocola said he's interested in 5G broadcast, but he wants to see how it develops first. “I want to be the settler, not the pioneer.” He said he still believes ATSC 3.0 will bring in revenue for LPTV.

Gray Television, which owns many LPTV stations in addition to its full-power portfolio, doesn’t have plans to pursue 5G broadcast, Senior Vice President Rob Folliard said. “We think 3.0 is the future of television.” Levi said that as cellular tech developed, it wasn’t unusual for multiple technology protocols to coexist. “When you look at the 5G mobile wireless ecosystem, it's clear that 5G very fluidly fits into that ecosystem, while ATSC 3.0 is still obviously going through considerable trials to reach that mobility.”