top of page
Search

First 5G Broadcast PlugFest by 5G-MAG brings developers together in Berlin

  • 2 days ago
  • 2 min read

The first 5G Broadcast Plugfest by 5G-MAG took place from 9 to 11 June 2026 at the premises of Fraunhofer FOKUS in Berlin bringing together infrastructure vendors, technology providers, software developers and operators to test the interoperability of 5G Broadcast equipment.


The event marks an important milestone as the 3GPP Release 19 specifications, now frozen, move attention from standardisation to implementation and deployment. Interoperability across multi-vendor set-ups is a key step on that path as confidence is needed that products from different manufacturers can work together in real deployments.

Over three days, participating teams paired core networks and transmitters from different suppliers and worked through a shared test plan. Equipment vendors ENENSYS, Nakolos, Rohde & Schwarz and TRedess contributed cores and transmitters, while receiver platforms, middleware and application tools from across the ecosystem completed the end-to-end chain. The collaborative, hands-on format gave engineering teams the chance to debug together in the room and to compare notes against the specifications as they went.


Testing spanned the full delivery chain. Teams exercised the core-to-transmitter interfaces, the radio layer across 3GPP Releases 14 to 19, and application-layer services including media streaming and public warning.


A particular focus of this Plugfest was the newer 3GPP functionalities introduced in Releases 16 to 19 such as time and frequency interleaving, CAS muting, CAS enhancements and the additional subcarrier spacings and bands. Testing these recently specified features in live, multi-vendor set-ups gives especially valuable early feedback, both to the engineers implementing them and to the standards community refining them.


Many multi-vendor combinations were brought up successfully and run end to end, demonstrating that cross-vendor 5G Broadcast is achievable today and providing valuable, practical feedback to implementers and to the standards community alike.


5G-MAG thanks all the teams who took part, and the sponsors whose support made the event possible, including Nakolos and Qualcomm.



Comments

bottom of page