After successfully demonstrating the technology during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Italian public service broadcaster Rai is collaborating with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to conduct further 5G broadcast trials during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
The latest pre-commercial trials focus on leveraging tower infrastructure to expand live, free-to-air delivery across smartphones and other devices, especially in demanding situations such as live sports coverage.
Combining 5G with traditional terrestrial broadcasting, 5G Broadcast enables delivery of content to an unlimited number of users without congesting existing networks, achieving a high level of geographic coverage across a multiplicity of devices, said the partners.
During the Games, reception, service robustness and user experiences in the Rome and Turin metropolitan regions will be assessed to explore how broadcasters could integrate 5G into hybrid distribution strategies.
“Major events like the Olympics are the ultimate stress-test for new distribution technologies,” said Gino Alberico, director of the Rai-Centre for Research and Innovation. “With 5G Broadcast we can bring live content directly to compatible devices with broadcast efficiency—opening the door to better coverage, improved resilience, and new ways to reach audiences on the move.”
Antonio Arcidiacono, CTO at the EBU, added, “Paris 2024 showed that 5G Broadcast can move beyond the lab, with demonstrations on hundreds of consumer devices. Milano Cortina 2026 is another important step: validating performance in a real operative environment, helping align the ecosystem, from broadcasters and network operators to chipset and handset manufacturers, around a shared, interoperable standard that can deliver live content day after day and simultaneously increase resilience in case of emergencies.”
