AT&T tackles LTE-Broadcast at college football championship

The first College Football Playoff Championship Game also witnessed the first appearance of AT&T's new LTE-Broadcast technology, which uses the 4G network to send the same content to multiple devices simultaneously.

AT&T and partner MobiTV broadcast two ESPN video streams from the game showing replays from different angles as well as a data stream that delivered a constantly updating feed of stats and trivia. AT&T sent those streams from its cellsites in and around the stadium, which network supplier Ericsson upgraded for the event. But as with Verizon’s demos at the Super Bowl in 2014, regular AT&T customers couldn’t access them as their phones don’t yet support LTE-Broadcast technology. Instead AT&T, Qualcomm and Samsung rigged up a few dozen Galaxy Note 3 devices with the necessary firmware to receive the multicast signal and demoed them at the event.