GatesAir Shows New Broadcast/LTE Technologies #IBC2014

The IBC2014 show will see the first integrated demonstration of GatesAir’s LTE Mobile Offload. The project is designed to help both broadcasters and mobile providers maximiz spectrum use and open up new business opportunities.

“LTE Mobile Offload represents a breakthrough opportunity for sharing wireless spectrum, and we see it as a natural progression of UHF broadcasting,” said Rich Redmond, chief product officer, GatesAir, in a statement. “Broadcasters, network operators and mobile service providers can reap a common benefit with this model. The advanced architecture of LTE Mobile Offload boils down to spectrum efficiency and the lowest cost means of delivering video content to larger audiences. The use of wireless spectrum no longer has to be an either/or proposition. We are empowering our customers to take advantage of consumer trends and a quickly evolving market.”

The technology was developed by the Technical University of Braunschweig’s Institute for Communications Technology. It uses the traditional broadcast model’s efficient one-to-many delivery to supplement the mobile network bandwidth.

The vendor believes that mobile network operators benefit by offloading video content to High Tower High Power (HTHP) transmitters from GatesAir, which eliminates network congestion and would allow broadcast network operators to use existing spectrum to simultaneously deliver fixed and mobile services over the air.

GatesAir is working with the Technical University of Braunschweig to commercialize the technology, which works with the current DVB-T2 broadcast standard used in Europe and other markets outside the U.S.