AT&T will build an LTE-Broadcast network tailor-made for video

AT&T hopes to breathe new life into some old airwaves by building a broadcast network, ideal for pushing out live video to many multiple devices without jamming up its pipes with traffic. The technology is called long-term evolution (LTE) Broadcast, and as it name implies it turns what is normally a two-way mobile broadband network into a one-way multicast network similar to those used by TV broadcasters.

Announcing the new project at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said AT&T’s mobile focus is “all about architecting networks to deliver video,” FierceWireless reported. The new network will also give AT&T a use for the old MediaFLO airwaves it bought off Qualcomm in 2011 after it shut down its FLO TV experiment. LTE-Broadcast’s best use case is for big live events like the Super Bowl, which could be watched by millions of people simultaneously. But the distributed nature of the LTE network could also let carriers tailor individual broadcast content for very specific locations. Cell sites at a stadium could send out a constant play-by-play feed as well as transmit highlights and replays to thousands of phone and tablets simultaneously. Stephenson didn’t say exactly when the new network would go live, though he hinted at a three-year horizon.