Broadcast Video Will Soon Be Packed into Smartphone Signals

If you want to watch video on your phone or tablet, you’ll find that many networks can’t always serve up the data fast enough. So your choices are either to find a Wi-Fi hotspot, take your chances on congestion and high data charges on a cellular network, or plug in a special dongle that picks up TV broadcasts. Early next year, an emerging wireless technology known as LTE Broadcast could change all that, essentially making it possible for carriers to put a TV-like broadcast stream within LTE cellular signals.

Putting data in broadcast mode reduces congestion but makes the most sense in situations where everyone is watching the same newscast, sports match, or other special piece of content at the same time. In such situations, using LTE Broadcast mode, a carriers’ transmitter needs to just send a signal out over one channel rather than separate ones for each mobile device. That’s how the traditional TV broadcast works: it doesn’t matter if 100 or a million people are watching, because the content is out there for the taking. The software in a carrier’s base station can tweak the LTE signal to include one or more channels that work in broadcast mode–enabling multiple users to receive the same content at the same time.