In 2025, Edgebeam Wireless was formed to take advantage of the unused spectrum of TV stations. The business is a partnership between the E.W. Scripps Company, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair. You may recall that a few years ago the FCC held an incentive auction to lure TV stations to sell their spectrum, and many station owners decided to do so. However, many TV stations, including these companies retained the spectrum because they perceived that the value in using the spectrum was greater than the value of selling it.
EdgeBeam is currently actively expanding the business. In April 2026, the company acquired Sinclair’s Broadspan distribution platform (including its software suite and core engineering team). In mid-April 2026, EdgeBeam onboarded Soracom as its first cellular partner to allow the business to bundle mobile and broadband services.
Edgebeam is using ATSC 3.0 technology. ATSC 3.0 is a technology upgrade for broadcast TV stations that overlays a broadband signal on top of an over-the-air TV transmission signal. When this technology was first introduced, stations talked about using it to provide reliable 4K video through the air, allow for video-on-demand, provide immersive high-quality audio, and greatly improve the broadcast emergency alert system. TV stations also envisioned a whole array of digital features that are standard with streaming services, like program guides, actor bios, and any other kind of added information a station wants to send to customers.
Edgebeam is going far beyond the vision of better television and wants to use the bandwidth to provide services to commercial and industrial users. The company has one big advantage since its owners have stations in most urban markets, giving the company access to a huge number of potential connections.
The company is targeting the following markets:
- Automotive connectivity and the ability to push large updates to cars for maps, infotainment, precision navigation, and safety enhancements.
- Providing a new connection for public safety networks, which have been shown to get quickly overwhelmed during emergencies.
- Digital signage to support video billboards.
- IoT and content delivery networks (CDNs) where Edgebeam would offload large local data files in edge networks.
- Improving the accuracy of GPS by being terrestrially-based instead of satellite-based.
- Automatic updates to firmware for ASC 3.0-enabled devices.
The company has already landed a large customer in the Digital Mapping Group. DMG is using the Edgebeam bandwidth to provide local precision mapping within a centimeter for construction and utility projects.
The real benefit of ASC 3.0 technology is that Edgebeam can send data to any device that has a built-in ASC 3.0-capable chip. The technology is already being deployed in smart TVs, giving the chipmaker the economy of scale needed to keep costs low. This is a more cost-effective way than enabling devices for 5G. Edgebeam is also using licensed spectrum that isn’t being used for other purposes.
The bandwidth isn’t large, and a single ASC 3.0 signal can realistically deliver speeds of 25 – 50 Mbps. However, when coupled with the H.265 video codec, the bandwidth can be used to deliver large files like 4K video. Since most of the planned uses of Edgebeam plan to transmit data in the background, that’s sufficient bandwidth for a slew of use cases. The company is clearly a new competitor to 5G. Interestingly, most of the Edgebeam markets are the same benefits cell carriers claimed for 5G – and largely didn’t fulfill. If Edgebeam is successful, it is going to make it that much harder to justify big outlays for 6G.
as a former TVWS loser I wanted to make some comments on this.
Automotive- great concept, but I don’t think coverage is substantial enough or consistent enough for this. ATSC3.0 is transmit only, and so it would have to broadcast those updates routinel with lots of error correction etc and do so for every make and model of car that wanted to push updates this way. I really doubt they’ll beat the cell industry here, where big contracts for low bitrate constant 2 way connectivity will almost certainly win.
Public safety- I don’t buy it. The biggest value here is in 2-way communications. Yet, there are cases where broadcasting out information is great, but this is not a weak spot. It’s the 2 way communications, sending images out, calls, video calls. ATSC3.0 can’t do any of this.
Digital signage- man the service would have to be CHEAP. We’re feeding a couple of digital signs with $5/m SIMs that do 64Kbps aggregate and that’s easily enough to trickle in data. Even a video file at 64kb only takes a number of minutes to transfer.
IoT- absolutely not. IoT is the reverse, it’s sensors and devices feeding up to the remote service. The fraction of data that is downlink is increadibly low. 1:1000 of the data. Maybe there’s a little room here for pushing updates or something but still, IoT is by and large an ‘uploading’ service
GPS- this could definitely be used here. Direct replacement for GPS birds. However, the only customers here are governments basically. And RTK exists and is free and can refine GPS precision to the cm.
Practical application…
TV! it’s a broadcast only solution!
Radio! it’s a broadcast only solution!
I can’t see this 5g/6g competitor solution because you still require the cell service for your uploads. 50Mbps in 2026+ on the downlink only doesn’t really fit a whole lot of scenarios that aren’t handled much better by multiple other services.
Maybe I’m wrong, but my prediciton is that the company fails and that bands ends up at auction for cell companies. Best case is terrestrial ‘GPS’ and the gov keeps it.