The FCC last week issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would give TV stations the right to use ATSC 3.0. This was made in response to a petition made in April 2016 by a consortium of Public Television, NAB, the Consumer Technology Association, and the AWARN Alliance.

There are several catches, however. One would require stations to continue broadcasting in ATSC 1.0 as they do now. The other is that manufacturers would not be required to produce equipment that could be used to decode the signals. The likelihood that broadcasters would use the technology is near zero, especially due to upcoming TV spectrum repacking that will use all available bandwidth in just about every market. A third hurdle is that consumers would have to bear the cost of converting the ATSC 3.0 signals to something usable with present TV sets.

Broadcasters and manufacturers will have an opportunity in the coming months to comment on the NPRM.