Multicast & Broadcast in 5G (MBS) introduces native point-to-multipoint delivery into 5G New Radio (NR), standardised from 3GPP Release 17 onwards. Delivery can be point-to-multipoint (PTM), one transmission shared by many devices, or point-to-point (PTP), a separate copy per device, with the network choosing between them. Unlike LTE-based broadcast (evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service, eMBMS), 5G MBS is integrated directly into the 5G Core and Radio Access Network (RAN), enabling efficient distribution of identical content to many devices simultaneously, whether for live TV, emergency alerts, or software updates.
5G-MAG implements the MBS user service layer defined in 3GPP TS 26.502, covering service announcement, session management, and media delivery, across a chain of 10 repositories from the application-provider tooling down to the RAN and UE.
The Problem It Solves
Sending the same content to a stadium full of devices as separate unicast streams consumes network capacity proportional to the audience size, however large it gets. MBS avoids that by building multicast and broadcast directly into the 5G Core and RAN, rather than as a separate overlay the way LTE-based eMBMS was: the network can choose point-to-multipoint delivery, one transmission reaching every device at once, instead of a per-device copy. That is what makes live TV, emergency alerts and mass software distribution practical at any audience size, without capacity scaling with the number of receivers.
Open Source, Built Together
Reference Tools for This Project
The real, running software for this technology — 12 repositories.
Also used by 5G Core Service Consumers
Also used by 3GPP RAN and Core Platforms
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