5G Media Initiative and 3GPP Release 14 Target 5G Broadcast Video

The 5G Media Initiative, largely made up of German and international technology companies are investigating how to use the 5G network for video distribution.  Some of the partners include Kathrein-Werke KG, Nokia, Rohde & Schwarz, Telefónica, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, the Institute for Broadcast Technology (IRT) together with educational labs and broadcasters. 

3GPP Release 14, the framework for 5G, has a set of media extensions which offer true “broadcast” capabilities, without relying on some assumptions of cellular service – such as allowing one-way transmission or not relying on SIM cards. This framework builds on some of the capabilities of eMBMS, such as allowing broadcasting on-demand within a single base station, allowing for solving high-density problems (i.e. in stadium).

Release 14 has also introduced a standardized interface for broadcasters to provide content. 3GPP specifications have been supporting broadcast for quite some time, but the commercial application had been lacking. With R14, 3GPP is aiming to improve the chances of broadcast being introduced in the mass market.

Video consumption will go up where 5G networks bring largescale bandwidth, as was seen in the transitions from 2G to 3G and 3G to 4G/LTE. Consumption will be driven by bandwidth availability as well as pricing and policies, such as zero-rated video services. I hesitate to limit video growth by the term “TV”, as hosts of video applications will all benefit from the 5G network, including marketing and corporate video, IoT video such as surveillance, as well as all forms of consumer video conferencing and sharing. In addition to mobile devices, 5G will be used for WTTx services which will impact video consumption into the home especially in rural areas, also potentially replacing the connection into the home. 

Although 5G will certainly introduce a better broadband experience for end users, the addressable market for very high-quality content (4K) is quite low in smartphone devices. It remains to be seen whether users will continue watching video the way they do now (e.g. low quality, zero-rated plans like TMUS BingeOn) or whether they will upgrade to higher quality video, to be watched outdoors. Similarly, mobile service providers could provide Android TV boxes reliant on mobile 5G connections to connect to the TV – although the ROI will be market dependent depending on fixed broadband penetration.

These media features offer the potential for mobile carriers to replace or augment traditional Pay TV distribution mechanisms, and would offer more efficient spectrum utilization – however battles around spectrum ownership between broadcasters and mobile carriers are already underway.

One of the biggest benefits 5G can offer over legacy terrestrial broadcasting (i.e. DVB) is improved interactivity. Note that the U.S. broadcast standard, ATSC, has also generated a ATSC 3.0 specification which is IP-enabled and will support some interactivity. The core requirements for interactivity in TV services include individually addressable advertising and audience measurement. Broadcasting rich metadata, including features like traffic, weather, sports scores, etc., can help to enrich content driven experiences; broadcast delivery of the application framework itself (in HTML5 frames) can support most modern devices, even with one-way connections. Moving beyond this, broadcast TV needs tools to catch up with on-demand viewing, so support for time-shifted and on-demand content, via a combination of local caching and on-demand network capabilities is a requirement. Finally, truly interactive applications – such as t-commerce (transactional commerce, moving from an advertisement to a purchase, or browsing a full web site) work well in hybrid broadcast-mobile networks.