The recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona attracted 109,000 attendees and more than 2,900 exhibitors, sponsors, and partners. Yet there was relatively little news about 5G Broadcast, a multicast technology to enable the efficient transmission of television and other broadcast media from either high-power tall towers or mobile network masts to any number of receivers.
5G Broadcast has yet to capture the imagination of broadcasters and has yet to develop a business model to excite telecommunications network providers or device manufacturers.
Rohde & Schwarz had a live demo of 5G Broadcast, with the first available off-the-shelf mobile devices from Motorola Mobillity, the Motorola Razr 50 ultra, featuring minor software modifications to support 5GB.
5G Broadcast was showcased at the Olympic Games in France last year, with TDF delivering live services in Paris, Nantes, and Bordeaux to 250 test users with custom handsets from Xiaomi.
The 5G Broadcast Strategic Task Force is an initiative involving TDF and other partners to drive the development of a joint commercial roadmap across six European markets representing more than 270 million people.
We have been hearing about the potential of 5G Broadcast for many years, but it has yet to gain much traction. Irrespective of the ability to transmit signals, consumer adoption will be dependent upon the availability of compelling services and widespread support in devices.
In theory, DVB-I can be used as a service layer to announce the availability of 5G Broadcast services to enable them to be discovered by devices and displays. In practice, DVB-I can also be used to support unicast delivery to existing mobile phones.
There appears to be relatively little appetite from broadcasters to deliver their services over mobile networks, despite a market of over two billion 5G subscriptions worldwide, projected to reach six billion in 2030.
Broadcasters seem to be more intent on competing with other online services to offer media on demand, instead of focussing on their unique capability to reach millions of people at the same time.