The United Kingdom is planning for a future in which television is increasingly delivered over the internet and terrestrial television may ultimately be switched off. Setting a target date can help drive that transition, but the timeline should not become the objective. The real test is whether any replacement for terrestrial transmission has demonstrated that it can maintain universal access, achieve significant consumer adoption, and provide a service at least as reliable and accessible as the one it replaces.

There is little doubt about the direction of travel. Online delivery offers many advantages, including on-demand access, personalisation, improved accessibility and potentially better picture and sound quality. The question is no longer whether internet delivery will play an increasing role in the future of television, but under what conditions it can become a complete replacement for terrestrial broadcasting.

That requires a shift from assumptions to evidence. Much of the debate about television distribution necessarily depends on projections about future broadband coverage, capacity, consumer behaviour and technology. At some point, however, expectations about what should be possible need to become evidence of what has actually been achieved.

A target date can be a valuable planning tool. It can concentrate minds, stimulate investment and establish a framework for contracts and infrastructure decisions. Yet there is a danger that the timetable itself becomes the measure of success. The objective should not be to switch off terrestrial television by a particular date. It should be to create a replacement good enough to make terrestrial transmission unnecessary.

That distinction matters because industry success is not necessarily the same as consumer success. Broadcasters may reasonably want to reduce distribution costs, simplify infrastructure and gain greater certainty about future investment. Consumers have a simpler test: does their television work and can they use it easily?

For viewers, readiness means more than theoretical broadband availability. They need to be able to receive the services they expect, find them easily, use equipment of their choice and rely on those services when they need them. Universal access has been one of the defining characteristics of television in the United Kingdom. Moving distribution to the internet should not quietly redefine what universal means.

Availability is only the beginning. Adoption matters too. If a replacement service is technically available to almost every household but substantial numbers of people are unwilling or unable to use it as their normal means of watching television, that is important evidence about its readiness.

Switching off terrestrial television should therefore follow significant adoption of its replacement, rather than be used as the means of forcing that adoption.

Reliability also needs to be tested at the extremes, not simply under normal operating conditions. Broadcast television has the unusual characteristic that serving another million viewers requires virtually no additional transmission capacity. Internet distribution works differently, even with highly efficient content delivery networks.

Major national events provide an obvious test. Imagine England reaching a World Cup football final in Saudi Arabia in 2034. While it may be presumptive to plan on that basis, it provides a practical proof point.

The question is not whether an internet television system could theoretically support tens of millions of simultaneous viewers. That is an engineering challenge. The practical policy question is whether the complete system, from the broadcaster through distribution and access networks to millions of homes, will have demonstrated that it can, before committing to removing existing delivery capability that can already demonstrably deliver.

There are less dramatic tests that matter just as much. No distribution system is completely reliable, so the frequency of failure is only one measure. Time to restore service is another. Internet television introduces dependencies on broadband providers, access networks, routers, home networking, software platforms, applications and other systems. A service that is normally highly reliable but can leave some consumers without television for days following a fault has a different reliability profile from the service it replaces.

The previous digital television switchover may offer some useful experience, but this transition is fundamentally different. Analogue terrestrial television was replaced by another terrestrial broadcast system that delivered evident benefits.

The dawn of digital television delivered more channels, widescreen pictures, and coincided with the introduction of flat screen displays. The prospect of switching off analogue transmissions provided an additional incentive for consumers to upgrade.

An online transition involves many more networks, platforms, devices, service providers and commercial interests. More than two thirds of homes already receive online video on their television through hybrid platforms. It cannot simply be assumed that the previous playbook can be repeated.

None of this is an argument against online television or for retaining terrestrial broadcasting indefinitely. It is a reason for defining what successful replacement actually means and establishing objective evidence by which it can be judged.

The United Kingdom needs targets for television transition, and an ambitious timetable can help drive progress. The ultimate decision should be a decision gate, not simply a date in the diary.

The future of television should not arrive because the calendar says it is time. It should arrive when we can demonstrate that it is ready.

A public consultation on the government green paper, Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media, is open until the end of August 2026.

www.gov.uk

Groups representing low-power television stations in the United States are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to allow them to use 5G Broadcast as an alternative to ATSC 3.0, which is promoted as NextGen TV. Their proposal raises a wider question for broadcasters around the world: what might 5G Broadcast offer that existing terrestrial television standards cannot?

The groups have petitioned the FCC to permit low-power television stations to transmit using 5G Broadcast while maintaining at least one free-to-air linear television service. It follows an earlier petition from HC2 Broadcasting and calls from the LPTV Broadcasters Association for the regulator to open a rulemaking process.

The immediate issue is particular to the United States, where television broadcasters are migrating from the original ATSC digital television standard to ATSC 3.0. Yet the underlying question is relevant elsewhere because different transmission standards represent competing propositions for the use of valuable terrestrial spectrum.

ATSC 3.0 represents a necessary evolution from a first-generation digital television standard. It provides broadcasters with a modern, internet protocol-based transmission system offering much greater flexibility than its predecessor.

5G Broadcast comes from a different direction. It applies technology from successive generations of mobile communications to one-to-many distribution, without requiring an individual connection to a mobile network. It is part of the global 3GPP family of specifications, developed within an ecosystem that has historically evolved rapidly through successive generations and achieved adoption on an enormous scale.

That potentially changes the question of what a terrestrial broadcast network is designed to reach.

Traditional television transmission has generally been engineered around reception through rooftop or fixed antennas. 5G Broadcast potentially extends the proposition to portable and handheld devices, including smartphones, with greater emphasis on mobile reception.

There are reasons for caution. The history of mobile television is littered with technologies that demonstrated that television could be delivered to handheld devices without demonstrating that enough people wanted to watch it that way. DVB-H is among the obvious precedents.

The circumstances are different today. Video viewing on mobile devices is commonplace, while the smartphone has become a near-universal personal media platform. The question is therefore no longer whether people will watch video on phones, but whether there is an advantage in delivering some of that video through an efficient one-to-many network rather than millions of individual streams.

That could also be relevant in markets such as the United Kingdom. 5G Broadcast could form part of a future television distribution strategy without requiring a binary choice between terrestrial broadcasting and broadband. Broadcast remains particularly efficient for simultaneously distributing popular services to large audiences, while fixed and mobile internet connections provide effectively unlimited choice and personalised delivery.

Service discovery then becomes important. DVB-I has already been demonstrated and integrated with 5G Broadcast, providing a global standard for discovering and presenting television and other audiovisual media services independently of the network used to deliver them.

That makes the technologies complementary rather than competitive. A receiver could discover a service through DVB-I and receive it over 5G Broadcast, another terrestrial network or conventional fixed internet protocol delivery. Hybrid implementations can combine those networks and provide transitions between broadcast and broadband reception.

None of this establishes that 5G Broadcast will achieve widespread adoption. Device support, spectrum availability, network economics and consumer demand will ultimately determine its prospects.

The American petition illustrates why it deserves serious consideration. The choice may not simply be between successive generations of television transmission. 5G Broadcast offers another proposition: applying a global mobile technology ecosystem to retain the efficiency of broadcasting while extending its reach to the devices on which audiences increasingly consume media.

www.fcc.gov

Google is expanding its Freeplay offering on Google TV in the United States, adding more than 10,000 movies and shows available on demand to over 300 scheduled online channels. The move makes free television a more substantial part of the Google TV platform.

“We’re bringing video-on-demand to Google TV Freeplay, which gives you instant access to free entertainment,” Google announced. The advertising-supported programming requires a Google account and internet connection but no additional subscription.

The on-demand library includes programming from studios including A24 and Lionsgate. Google says the library will be refreshed throughout the year.

The company is also expanding the scheduled channel lineup to more than 300, across news, sports, reality television, true crime and other genres. Recent additions include World of Love Island, Bloomberg TV+, Yahoo! Sports Network and The Martha Stewart Channel.

Freeplay is currently available on Google TV devices in the United States. Google TV is the company’s television experience built on the underlying Android TV operating system, which is also used independently by other device manufacturers. Freeplay sits within the Google TV environment and can be accessed from its own app on the home screen.

That positioning is arguably more significant than whether the programming is scheduled or available on demand. Google already has an enormous online video service in YouTube. Freeplay gives it something different: a television proposition that forms part of the platform experience rather than a destination that viewers specifically choose to visit.

Google began integrating free scheduled channels directly into Google TV in 2023, initially making them available through its Live tab without requiring users to download or open separate applications. The offering subsequently became Freeplay. Adding a substantial catalogue of programming on demand extends the proposition beyond the conventional television channel experience.

The name is instructive. Freeplay describes what the viewer gets rather than how it is delivered or funded. Programming is available to play without taking out another subscription. Whether it comes from a scheduled stream or an on-demand library is increasingly an implementation detail.

It also points to an evolving role for the television platform. Google TV has been positioned primarily as a way of bringing together programming from multiple applications and helping viewers find something to watch. With Freeplay, Google is increasingly providing programming directly within that environment as well.

There is an interesting historical parallel. A television set traditionally came with television. Turn it on, connect an antenna and programming was immediately available without choosing a service provider or taking out a subscription. Smart televisions initially turned that proposition into a collection of applications through which viewers assembled their own choice of services.

Online television platforms are now beginning to complete the circle. By providing scheduled and on-demand programming as part of the platform, Google can ensure that a new television already has something to watch.

For broadcasters and online video providers, the strategic significance is that the television operating environment is becoming more than a neutral platform for their applications. It can aggregate, recommend and increasingly provide programming of its own.

Freeplay remains a United States proposition for now. With Google TV distributed across televisions and streaming devices from multiple manufacturers, this development provides an indication of how Google sees the television platform evolving. Free television may increasingly become a feature of the platform itself.

tv.google