Fox Sports to Stream 4K Video Over 5G at US Open for 'Potential Broadcast'

Fox Sports, with Fox Innovation Lab and partners AT&T, Ericsson and Intel, will stream 4K video over 5G for “potential broadcast” nationwide at the U.S. Open Championship June 14-17 in Southampton, New York, it said Tuesday. Fox will use 5G wireless technology to transmit 4K HDR images from two cameras at the seventh hole through the network’s production truck, making it available to Fox Sports viewers through DirecTV, it said. The 5G technology, deployed for the first time at broad scale earlier this year by Intel and partners at the Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, could, in the future, deliver “disruptive abilities” to broadcasters and consumers, including real-time virtual reality views, Fox said. A network goal is to “aggressively explore evolving technologies as part of our live sports production,” said Michael Davies, Fox Sports senior vice president-field and technical operations, “in preparation for what will become the industry standards.” Intel is providing its 5G mobile trial platform device to deliver the 5G to IP translation. AT&T will use millimeter-wave spectrum to deliver the 5G connection, and Ericsson is providing the 5G radios, baseband, simulated network core and 4K video encoder and decoder.