5G BROADCAST also on the Olympic stage in Milan -Cortina but the smartphone is the crucial factor.
Following successful demonstrations during the Paris 2024 Olympics, Italian public service broadcaster Rai and the EBU conducted new pre-commercial 5G BROADCAST tests during the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. How 5G BROADCAST could leverage a robust antenna infrastructure to extend live and unencrypted radio and television broadcasts to smartphones and other end devices, especially for demanding applications such as live broadcasting of major sporting events and the delivery of essential services to mobile phones in emergency situations.
Unlike conventional mobile streaming, 5G BROADCAST is designed to deliver the same content to an unlimited number of users without overloading mobile networks or consuming user data. It combines the efficiency of traditional terrestrial broadcasting (DTT) with LTE/5G technology to achieve high geographical coverage and a large number of addressable devices. The result is a single, standardized method that can support live video and audio services, as well as emergency alerts on all compatible mobile phones.
Presently there are 5G BROADCAST trials in several countries. Focus are at the moment at France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, United States and China. Also these days we will pay attention to Italy and Serbia.
During the Winter Olympics, the partners evaluated reception, service robustness and user experience in the metropolitan areas of Rome and Turin, and assessed how broadcasters can integrate 5G BROADCAST into hybrid distribution strategies.
Major events like the Olympics are the ultimate stress test for new distribution technologies, said Gino Alberico, Director of the Rai-Centre for Research and Innovation. With 5G BROADCAST, we can deliver live content directly to compatible devices with broadcast efficiency – opening the door to better coverage, improved resilience and new ways to reach audiences on the go.
Antonio Arcidiacono, Technical Director at the EBU, added: Paris 2024 showed that 5G BROADCAST can go beyond the lab, with demonstrations on hundreds of consumer devices. Milano Cortina 2026 is another important step: validating performance in a real operational environment, helping to align the ecosystem, from broadcasters and network operators to chipset and handset manufacturers, around a common, interoperable standard that can deliver live content day after day while increasing resilience in emergencies.
Serbia’s public broadcaster ETV has now chosen Germany’s Rohde & Schwarz to upgrade its main transmitter station in the capital Belgrade. The project will deploy the first 5G BROADCAST transmitter in Serbia to increase the country’s broadcasting capacity ahead of EXPO 2027.
Adding 5G BROADCAST is crucial for ETV’s long-term sustainability, said Sava Savic, CEO of ETV. The project demonstrates our commitment to innovative solutions that meet current needs and prepare us for the broadcasts of the future. The 5G BROADCAST transmitter is scheduled to be operational in the third quarter of 2026, enabling ETV to offer enhanced mobile services in collaboration with mobile operators to improve their quality and coverage.
5G BROADCAST is planned to be present at the MWC (Mobile World Congress) mobile fair in Barcelona from 2 to 5 March 2026. The annual fair brings together the telecom industry, especially mobile operators and mobile manufacturers, who must be convinced that 5G BROADCAST in terrestrial networks will be more of an asset than a competition with 5G mobile broadband. The two separate platforms can interact and offer seamless transitions between terrestrial broadcasts and mobile Internet.
Analysis
5G BROADCAST has now been tested in around 25 countries over a period of six years. The only thing that remains in principle is that the mobile industry and the radio and television industry (with public service and broadcasting companies at the forefront) can agree. It will be crucial whether the mobile industry now accepts that the special chipset for 5G BROADCAST can be used in smartphones.
Despite the deep commitment to 5G BROADCAST in most major countries in Europe, it is still completely silent in Sweden. This may be surprising since there is debate about how the digital terrestrial network should be used and financed during the eight year contract period for public broadcasters SVT and SR that has now begun. The state’s investigators might not yet have understood what the brand new technology entails.
As linear TV gradually decreases in importance, the need for terrestrial digital television in the UHF band has also been questioned. Mobile operators and mobile manufacturers have been particularly keen to take over the frequency space. They have a consistent need for increased space to transmit audiovisual content - mainly video - which is estimated to take at least 70% of the total traffic - to smartphones and other mobile devices worldwide.
One problem is that the term ”5G BROADCAST” is often confused with 5G mobile broadband. But 5G BROADCAST has nothing to do with either mobile networks or the Internet, but is a technology used for digital terrestrial broadcasting in television networks (DTT).
Mobile telecom is a gigantic industrial sector globally. Would it want to leave some of the audio and video traffic to the terrestrial networks? It is true that the volume of the mobile networks are near to overloaded, but the revenues are significant for the mobile operators.
The companies that currently specialize in terrestrial broadcasting for radio and TV, such as Sweden’s Teracom, are facing an elephant here. A reasonable assessment is that there are strong interests within the mobile industry that are lobbying to have the digital terrestrial network for TV phased out in whole or in part, whereby the freed frequency space is transferred to mobile broadband (4G, 5G and 6G). This option has already been established by International Telecommunication Union ahead of its next frequency conference in 2032 and will be established unless the radio and TV broadcasters can prove that the current terrestrial network is being used efficiently.
Then it does not matter if billions in tax money are pumped in to save the terrestrial network for public broadcasting channels at the same time as UHF frequency space for commercial companies are left vacant. But still few politicians understand what is going on.
Read more
5G Broadcast Trials Return To The Olympic Stage At Milano Cortina 2026.(Tech EBU)
5G BROADCAST HORIZONS FOR EUROPE (Report to Broadcast Network Europe by South180 - November 2025)
ETV Rolls Out 5G Broadcast In Serbia with Rohde & Schwarz
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