Big Blue Marble claims first full Release 19 5G Broadcast platform
May 27, 2026 11.59 Europe/London By Julian Clover


Big Blue Marble says its Nakolos platform has become the first end-to-end 5G Broadcast solution to support the complete 3GPP Release 19 feature set.

The Vienna-based company said the milestone was achieved with ecosystem partners bitstem, TRedess and SYES, following two years of standardisation work alongside organisations including the EBU and Broadcast Networks Europe.

Nakolos has evolved from 3GPP Release 14 through to Release 19 and now supports features intended to make 5G Broadcast deployment more practical for broadcasters and transmission operators.

These include Time Frequency Interleaving, designed to improve signal robustness while enabling reuse of existing transmission sites; CAS-Muting, which allows DVB-T2 infrastructure to be repurposed for 5G Broadcast; and support for early-deployment frequency bands B112 for the US and B113 for Europe and other markets.

Big Blue Marble said Release 19-compatible transmitter solutions from TRedess and SYES, combined with bitstem’s new 5GR receiver platform, mean operators can now test and deploy complete interoperable 5G Broadcast chains in real-world conditions.

Johann Mika, chief innovation officer at Big Blue Marble, said Release 19 represented “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,” he said.

The company said Nakolos is designed for broadcasters and network operators preparing infrastructure ahead of the expected arrival of commercial 5G Broadcast-enabled consumer devices.