How private 5G could reshape IPTV and digital signage in enterprise AV

• Features

• 21/09/2026

At InfoComm 2026, Vitec used a live, private 5G network to deliver video content across the show floor. Vitec’s demo was made possible in partnership with LG Electronics and is hopefully the first step as the two seek to deliver a “wire-like” experience for mission-critical enterprise video.

Joon Sung Lee, private 5G head in the LG Electronics CTO’s office, said: “While private 5G is already being adopted across sectors such as manufacturing, transportation, and healthcare, its use for enterprise video remains at an early stage. Now, together with Vitec, we are demonstrating how video can be delivered reliably over next-generation wireless networks.”

5G was touted as a technological development that would have significant impact, but this partnership and demo are one of the few instances where 5G has started to come back and make its presence known in the AV conversation.

New maturity

Is there a 5G-play in the digital signage and IPTV spaces? Eli Garten, senior vice president, global IPTV & partner solutions, Vitec, believes so and explains: “Private 5G has really started to take shape in the last few years. The technology is mature. It’s licensed and permitted by many countries. The adoption rate is becoming quite interesting, not necessarily as a replacement for traditional enterprise-grade Wi-Fi or local area networks, but more as a complementary solution. In some cases, it does take over certain applications that can benefit from a private network.”

Private 5G is a licensed, regulated infrastructure that operates in dedicated spectrum bands, fundamentally different from the congested radio environments where Wi-Fi struggles.

The advantages are distinct. Operating in a licensed band means freedom from interference. No consumer smartphones, tablets, or Wi-Fi access points are competing for the spectrum. The result is highly predictable performance with high bandwidth availability, low jitter, and low latency.

For IPTV and digital signage, these characteristics hold significant value and fit seamlessly into a myriad of use cases. Garten notes: “We typically target large venues (with 5G solutions) — sports and entertainment, casinos, airports, or military facilities. There is always Wi-Fi, but it is shared across many different applications. You could build the most glorious Wi-Fi infrastructure for a sports venue, but if you bring in 50,000 to 100,000 fans, the Wi-Fi infrastructure loses its ability to guarantee performance, latency, and overall quality of service.”

Many are moving forward with live 5G implementations. Joseph Mendonca, director, business development, AVI-SPL, describes the current landscape: “There has certainly been more discussion than deployment, but we have different verticals demanding 5G — primarily private 5G, which is what we would use for dedicated commercial applications like digital signage and IPTV.”

Healthcare is among the verticals to move decisively. Hospitals and health systems deploying IPTV and digital signage must contend with strict compliance requirements. Segregating this traffic from corporate networks is not merely best practice; it is often mandated.

Sporting venues represent another compelling use case as they require reliable content distribution across vast, complex spaces. This needs to be accomplished in outdoor areas where traditional wired infrastructure becomes prohibitively expensive. AVI-SPL is currently working with PGA rated courses using 5G to deliver personalised immersive digital signage and IPTV experiences throughout the golf course.

Transportation and mobile environments add another dimension. Casinos like the Wynn Hotel deploy private 5G to deliver content to patrons as they travel in buses and boats — mobile platforms where traditional networking is simply not feasible.

Defence contractors and financial institutions represent a third tier of adoption, though for different reasons. These organisations do not pursue 5G for performance gains but for security. Digital signage and IPTV traffic can be segregated entirely from critical corporate networks, eliminating an attack vector.

Retail, where digital signage and IPTV are critical, has been slower to adopt. The economics do not yet align and Mendonca is candid: “Big retailers have facilities everywhere, making private 5G an easy contract, but they operate at very low margins. Private 5G is currently about two to five times the cost of traditional internet services, so there has to be a strong application driving it.”

What would the impact be if manufacturers started building IPTV and digital signage solutions directly into 5G infrastructure?

Mendonca’s assessment is pragmatic: “Manufacturing technology to be 5G-ready for easy integration into a private 5G network is great. But if off-the-shelf solutions are not available, we just have to deploy additional equipment to make that connection. Long term, as we look at our industry, technologies will absolutely be manufactured to integrate much more easily into these new network environments. It facilitates implementation and improves reliability, because fewer pieces of technology mean fewer points of failure.”

The best candidate?

How 5G fares against the competition, in the form of wired signal distribution and Wi-Fi, bears investigation.

Wi-Fi is a shared resource. Neighbouring access points, signal reflections, and user behaviour in adjacent channels all influence performance. With private 5G, the network is owned, controlled, and dedicated. The quality of service is guaranteed because the infrastructure guarantees it.

Mendonca clarifies: “You actually have great control with wired networks too, using VLANs to control exactly how an endpoint is served. Assuming you have a well-architected wired network, there is little net advantage to private 5G over it in terms of sheer control. Typically, we are comparing private 5G to Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is regional, limited in coverage area, and relies on shared bandwidth, making it susceptible to whatever is happening at that moment. Private 5G is guaranteed and fully controlled.”

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Wired infrastructure, despite its requirements for cabling, remains the performance gold standard. But for many organisations — especially existing facilities running 24/7—retrofitting with wired connections is operationally catastrophic.

Garten articulates this challenge: “We’re looking at two main scenarios where 5G has the edge over its competitors for digital signage and IPTV. First, existing facilities that do not have a modern wired IP network but want to evolve with digital signage or IPTV trends. Overhauling an entire facility is very invasive. You have to open walls, put in wiring and switches. Even with the budget, many of these places, like airports or hospitals, run 24/7. The interruption to operational service is substantial. Private 5G allows you to relatively seamlessly introduce radios throughout an existing building, creating the necessary infrastructure in a fraction of the time.”

For new facilities, the shift may be even more dramatic. Garten speculates: “It might change the paradigm entirely. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in five to seven years, building specifications and consulting firms don’t even list a wired solution in their RFPs, opting instead for a combination of Wi-Fi and private 5G.”

Standards bodies are working to improve 5G’s capabilities. One development that is expected to be on the horizon is multicast support which would add the ability to transmit a single stream to multiple recipients simultaneously.

Currently, 5G does not natively support multicast, though standards evolution is underway. Garten explains the interim solution: “Multicast is essential for IPTV. The 5G standard, as it is today, does not natively specify multicast. However, there are ways to mitigate that. When operating heavy video traffic over Wi-Fi, the access points do a conversion at the edge to a multi-unicast stream. They receive a multicast from the wired side but duplicate it over the air to the individual clients. This is what we’re currently implementing in 5G, and as the standards evolve, we will see native multicast.”

Mendonca offers a counterpoint and suggests: “Multicast would definitely be desirable for environments where you want the exact same content consumed at different endpoints. However, because 5G gives us so much higher bandwidth to work with, we can actually target and personalise content to each individual endpoint. Even if it’s broadly the same content, the subtle messaging and personalisation can be unique.”

Edge computing horizon

Edge computing represents a genuine frontier for 5G. Mendonca is emphatic about its importance: “Here at AVI-SPL, we are very excited about private 5G because everything is getting more intelligent. We are seeing a push for more edge computing to analyse environmental data in real-time and alter the content or experience accordingly. That data could be from IoT sensors or business applications.”

He continues: “The ability to build intelligence and make content relevant to the people actually consuming it is critical. Content isn’t one-size-fits-all. A person’s mindset is different if they are at the park, the theatre, or the financial district. Making content contextually relevant requires AI on the edge, and for that, you need the reliable, high-bandwidth networks that 5G provides.”

This change of approach represents a shift in how organisations think about signage and IPTV. Rather than distributing pre-created content, systems could analyse real-time environmental data — occupancy, demographics, weather, event status — and adapt content in real time. The bandwidth guarantee and latency performance that private 5G delivers are prerequisites for this evolution.

The future results might be a completely different way of optimising digital signage. Mendonca paints the picture: “Cities are investing significantly in kiosks that offer information and interactive navigation. Because we no longer need wired network connectivity at those locations through 5G, and we now have kiosks powered by alternative energy sources like solar, you can put a digital sign literally anywhere. And when you throw intelligence and analytics into the mix, you can start working towards smarter outcomes.”

All about trust

The biggest challenge facing 5G’s adoption is a matter of perception by IT and AV decision makers, who based their initial thoughts about private 5G on their experience as a consumer using public 5G networks. Everyone has encountered a lag or jitter when streaming a video while connected to a Wi-Fi network. This association of lower quality performance with wireless signal transmission colours how consumers perceive the prospect of moving their digital signage and IPTV systems to 5G.

Garten acknowledges this challenge directly: “This challenge occupies me day and night right now. We’ve been here before. We were one of the first to evangelise IPTV over multicast 20 years ago, trying to convince IT teams to give it a try. We went through the same process when we launched our first multicast Wi-Fi application. And now we are facing similar pushback with 5G.”

Rather than making theoretical claims, Vitec and its partners are building proof points. Garten describes the approach: “We’ve taken a very careful approach, spending a year with LG to verify the solution in live labs running 24/7. Now, we are teaming up with a few friendly sites in different industries to launch production-grade proof of concepts. We plan to publish these in the next few months to show the world that high-profile customers who do not compromise on reliability are successfully using it.”

The work being done might be having an impact as Mendonca observes: “5G is a much more adopted and understood technology now. While people used to have a negative reaction to wireless for critical applications, there are now so many proven use cases and data points that the concern is fading.”

The shift reflects changing expectations about digital systems themselves. In an era where consumer experience expectations are shaped by best-in-class technology, failure is no longer tolerable. Mendonca explains: “In the past, if a digital sign went down, it was no big deal. Today, everyone is measuring the user experience, and a failure exposed to the consumer is no longer tolerated. The demands are higher, but we now have the technology required to ensure those failures don’t happen.”

Looking ahead, the long-term trajectory of 5G is becoming clearer. As the technology becomes more familiar, as more proof points accumulate, and as next-generation applications like edge-based personalisation demand the reliability and bandwidth that private 5G provides, adoption will expand beyond early-adopter niches. Operational patterns, integration methodologies, and customer confidence are being established.

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