Big Blue Marble has announced that its Nakolos platform is the first end-to-end 5G Broadcast solution worldwide to implement the complete set introduced with 3GPP Release 19 — the second and final major specification release for 5G-Advanced.
The milestone follows two years of active standardisation contributions alongside organisations including the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Broadcast Networks Europe and marks the first time broadcasters and broadcast network operators can validate and deploy all major Release 19 enhancements in real-world environments.
Built on a carrier-grade, 3GPP-native architecture, Nakolos has evolved continuously from Release 14 through Release 19. The platform now supports a complete set of new capabilities that directly address the economic and operational realities of 5G Broadcast rollout, including Time Frequency Interleaving (TFI), which enables the reuse of existing transmission sites while improving signal robustness; CAS-Muting functionality, which allows existing DVB-T2 infrastructure to be repurposed for 5G Broadcast transmission, substantially reducing initial deployment costs; and support for the new early-deployment frequency bands B112, targeting the US market, and B113, targeting Europe and other global markets.
In combination with Release 19-compatible transmitter solutions from TRedess and SYES, and the new bitstem 5GR receiver platform, released in conjunction with this announcement, customers can now validate and deploy complete interoperable 5G Broadcast chains under real operating conditions rather than in isolated proof-of-concept environments.
Johann Mika, Chief Innovation Officer, Big Blue Marble, said, “Release 19 represents a concrete step forward for commercial 5G Broadcast, not a future promise.
“The features introduced in this release give network operators a credible path to cost-efficient deployments using infrastructure they already have.
“With Nakolos, they can begin that transition today, ahead of the first generation of commercial 5G Broadcast-enabled consumer devices."
