Broadcast alliance pushes back on LPTV 5G standard petition, backs ATSC 3.0 path

A trade association representing low power television operators is urging the FCC to reject a petition that would authorize a cellular-based broadcast standard as a standalone transmission option for LPTV stations, arguing the move could ultimately expose LPTV spectrum to reallocation by wireless carriers.

The Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance, known as ATBA, staked out its position in a formal statement from executive director Lee Allen Miller, responding to a sequence of filings, op-eds and public exchanges that have sharpened a dispute over the future of LPTV transmission standards.

“The issue is not innovation. It is control,” Miller wrote.

The petition and the pushback

The dispute centers on a May 12 letter from Frank Copsidas, chairman and founder of the LPTV Broadcasters Association, to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

The letter asked the commission to recognize the 3GPP 5G Broadcast standard — specifically Releases 16 through 19, including frequency Bands 112 and 113 — as a voluntary transmission option under Part 74 of FCC rules, which governs low power television stations.

The LPTVBA letter also asked the commission to fast-track a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in response to a petition filed by HC2 Broadcasting in MB Docket 25-168, and to move toward a final order “without delay.”

Two days later, Mark Aitken, senior vice president at Sinclair Broadcast Group and president of ONE Media, published an op-ed in TV Technology arguing that 5G Broadcast signals can be carried inside an ATSC 3.0 transmission, and that deployment can begin now under that framework. Copsidas responded the following day publicly.

ATBA’s position, laid out in Miller’s statement and in formal comments the alliance submitted to the FCC in January, is that any exploration of 5G Broadcast technology should happen within a broadcaster-controlled ATSC 3.0 architecture — not through a separate regulatory authorization that would allow a cellular standard to operate independently on LPTV channels.

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The reallocation argument

Miller’s core concern is that authorizing a 3GPP standard — the same family of standards used by cellular carriers — on LPTV spectrum would give the wireless industry a new argument in future spectrum reallocation debates.

The 3GPP standards family is the technical foundation for cellular networks operated by major wireless carriers. Authorizing that same standard on broadcast spectrum, Miller argued, changes the regulatory calculus in ways that may be difficult to reverse.

“If LPTV channels can run a 3GPP standard, and if 3GPP standards are the global cellular norm, why is this spectrum allocated to broadcasting at all?” Miller wrote.

He pointed to the 2017 broadcast incentive auction as precedent.

That proceeding resulted in approximately 84 megahertz of television broadcast spectrum being transferred to wireless carriers. LPTV stations, which hold secondary spectrum licenses, bore the brunt of the displacement. Hundreds went dark. Reimbursement funding made available to full-power and Class A stations did not initially extend to most LPTV operators.

“Our spectrum has already been treated as a reserve account that wireless interests can draw against when they decide they want more,” Miller wrote. “This is not paranoia. It is precedent.”

Interests behind the petition

Miller’s statement also raised questions about undisclosed relationships in the LPTVBA letter. According to public records cited in his filing, Copsidas is chief executive of two of the three American companies the letter names as 5G Broadcast leaders — XGN Global and X1 Mobile. HC2 Broadcasting, which filed the petition the letter asks the FCC to fast-track, is a co-founder of the 5G Broadcast Collective, an industry advocacy organization that Copsidas also founded and serves as president.

Those relationships were not disclosed in the LPTVBA letter to Chairman Carr.

Miller argued that the business interests driving the petition are not aligned with those of independent LPTV operators. Companies like Qualcomm and Ericsson, he noted, benefit from a unified 3GPP standard that spans cellular and broadcast bands — it expands their addressable market and reduces engineering costs. The question, he said, is whether it benefits LPTV.

“ATSC 3.0 lets an LPTV licensee become a platform operator,” Miller wrote. “Standalone 5G Broadcast risks reducing that same licensee to a spectrum host inside a cellular-defined ecosystem.”

Central to ATBA’s argument is the current state of the ATSC 3.0 transition, also known as NextGen TV.

According to the FCC’s own Fifth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, released Oct. 29, 2025, full-power NextGen TV service had launched in more than 80 markets, reaching more than 70 percent of the U.S. population. More than 14 million ATSC 3.0-capable television sets and 300,000 external converters had been sold through 2024.

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ATBA’s January 2026 comments in GN Docket 16-142, the docket governing the ATSC 3.0 transition, confirmed those figures and called on the FCC to complete the transition rather than authorize a competing standard.

The LPTVBA letter characterized ATSC 3.0 as a standard reaching “only a tiny percentage of the devices Americans actually use.” Miller disputed that framing, calling it inconsistent with FCC findings.

ATBA’s formal filings also call for eliminating the current simulcasting requirement — which obligates many stations to transmit in both the older ATSC 1.0 standard and the newer ATSC 3.0 standard simultaneously — so that stations can transition fully to the newer platform.

The technical convergence argument

Miller’s statement addressed a key framing in the LPTVBA position: the claim that engineers and industry figures who once viewed 5G Broadcast as a threat to ATSC 3.0 have begun endorsing it as an alternative.

The record tells a different story, Miller said.

In March, TV Technology published a Q&A with Luiz Fausto, vice president of standards development at the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the standards body that oversees ATSC 3.0. Fausto described work completed by ATSC’s specialist group on the physical layer — designated TG3/S32 — on interleaving 5G Broadcast waveforms inside ATSC 3.0 transmissions.

The work, which began in 2024, produced an amendment to ATSC Recommended Practice A/327, covering physical layer guidelines. The amendment was under ATSC membership ballot through March 10, with publication expected immediately after.

“ATSC continues to innovate beyond today’s deployments, extending the value of ATSC technology to broader IP-centric and broadcast-to-everything use cases — while maintaining a deliberate roadmap that protects existing investments and enables future growth,” Fausto said.

Aitken’s May 14 op-ed in TV Technology made a similar case from the engineering side: that 5G Broadcast signals can be time-multiplexed as a payload within an ATSC 3.0 radio frequency channel, with ATSC 3.0 serving as the foundational broadcast layer. His proposed deployment plan kept ATSC 3.0 as the platform in each phase, treating 5G Broadcast as an additive capability within it.

Miller said he observed a working demonstration of that architecture at NAB Show 2026 in April, at the booth of Castanet, a company led by 5G Broadcast technologist Vern Fotheringham. The demonstration showed a live 5G Broadcast signal operating within an ATSC 3.0 transmission — not a simulation or slide presentation, Miller said, but a functioning system shown publicly on the NAB show floor.

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Copsidas, in his reply to Aitken’s op-ed, described the Castanet work as “essentially a bandaid solution until 5G Broadcast is fully licensed and available.”

Miller flagged that characterization as a significant disclosure.

“The petition is not a coexistence request. It is a replacement request, now stated openly in the trade press,” he wrote.

What ATBA is asking for

ATBA’s formal filings ask the FCC to:

• Eliminate the simulcasting requirement so stations can fully transition to ATSC 3.0
• Establish FCC test markets to accelerate consumer adoption, with explicit protections for LPTV station participation
• Clarify that the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962 requires ATSC 3.0 tuners in new television sets, a step Miller described as the most consequential the FCC could take to accelerate adoption
• Set a firm sunset date for ATSC 1.0 service for full-power stations while preserving LPTV flexibility to transition on each operator’s own timeline
• Preserve the requirement that broadcasters transmit at least one free over-the-air program signal at no direct charge to viewers

The alliance explicitly asked the commission not to act on the LPTVBA petition.

Why it matters

The fight over LPTV’s transmission future is, at its core, a fight over who controls the spectrum and the ecosystem that depends on it — and the stakes extend well beyond the 1,800-plus stations that currently hold LPTV licenses.

For LPTV operators, the practical question is straightforward: does their spectrum stay in the broadcast allocation, or does it become part of an argument for moving it to cellular? The 2017 incentive auction answered that question once already, and not in broadcasters’ favor. A regulatory authorization that puts a 3GPP cellular standard on LPTV channels — even framed as voluntary — gives the wireless industry a rhetorical and legal foothold it currently lacks.

For the broader broadcast industry, the ATSC 3.0 transition is the real prize on the table. The standard is mid-deployment with significant infrastructure investment behind it. A parallel regulatory path that authorizes a competing standard on the same channels doesn’t just slow the transition — it raises questions about whether the FCC sees ATSC 3.0 as the destination at all.

The winners in the scenario the LPTVBA letter envisions are, by Miller’s accounting, chipmakers, network equipment vendors and device manufacturers whose commercial interests are served by a unified cellular standard that also runs on broadcast spectrum. Those are not LPTV companies.

The question facing the FCC is whether it treats this as a technical standards dispute — in which case the ATSC TG3/S32 work already resolves it, inside the existing broadcast framework — or as a spectrum policy decision, in which case the 2017 incentive auction is the cautionary tale. The FCC has navigated both before. What it has not navigated is a situation where broadcast operators themselves provided the argument that their spectrum belongs in someone else’s ecosystem.

That is the trap Miller is describing. Whether the commission agrees may determine how much of the broadcast band still exists the next time this conversation comes around.