The technology enables a population of a billion-plus users to access the same or similar content broadcast at a lower cost .
“ That ' s a big drive over the next 12 to 18 months and it also fits in with this wireless technology because it will open up new ways to use the wireless technology . Most of our business today is done through other people ' s distribution points ,” says Ripley . “ We distribute our local sports through pay-TV – through cable and satellite – and we do over-the-air . But only 15-20 % of the people actually use the over-the-air signal . They generally get it retransmitted through cable and satellite .
“ NextGen Broadcast will get to over 75 % of the country [ USA ] by the end of this year . Approximately 5 million TVs will be sold in the US this year that are NextGen ready . And then we ' ve got all this activity in other countries like India , where we ' re doing a huge trial in Bangalore with the local public broadcaster there .
“ We hope to get into mobile devices as this market matures . Then you ' ve got Jamaica , Brazil and Korea , which are actually looking at rolling out mobility within the 5G Broadcast deployment , so there ' s a lot going on internationally that we help support . Domestically , we ' ve sort of hit escape velocity on this technology . The next stop for the speeding technology is mobile devices and personal devices here in the US .”
NextGen Broadcast is on the road to becoming the premier global digital standard . It has significant advantages over the European , Japanese and Chinese standards and is compelling as countries like Brazil and India look to upgrade their content distribution technologies .
“ It is set to become a significant global standard – probably not every country , but large , significant countries will adopt this standard because it is a much more efficient use of the spectrum , it is all IP-based , it unlocks the spectrum from a mobility perspective and it has massive cost advantages over traditional cellular networks you can imagine coming down the pipe and that really helps the underserved ,” says Parks .
“ This technology will be universal . The only issue is what day and how fast , that ' s all ,” Smith says . technologymagazine . com 127