WASHINGTON, D.C. — How serious is the NAB‘s effort to bring its Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) to fruition, and get it deployed as a solid alternative or even an ultimate replacement for GPS technology?
An independent company focused on BPS’s commercial deployment has come to be.
Introducing Merkhet Solutions Inc., which will work squarely on forging partnerships with private business and public entities including municipal works departments — the lynchpin for a successful commercialization of BPS, first conceived by the NAB technology team in 2021.
As RBR+TVBR shared in its Spring 2026 magazine, BPS is a patented terrestrial, GPS-independent timing and positioning technology that leverages ATSC 3.0 broadcast television signals. A push for a firm transition date from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0 is the NAB’s chief effort; Merkhet will take on the task of finding users of BPS technology as ATSC 3.0 towers are fully realized across the nation.
Such a task would fully negate any conversation that ATSC 3.0 is television’s version of the deployment of HD Radio, which after 20 years remains befuddling to many consumers and is absent in many mid-sized and small markets across the U.S.
According to the NAB, Merkhet Solutions “is engaging across critical infrastructure sectors, including energy, data centers, telecommunications and financial services – where a loss of precision time can trigger grid instability, outages and lost trades.”
“BPS represents a powerful intersection of innovation, public safety and opportunity for broadcasters,” said NAB President/CEO Curtis LeGeyt. “Launching Merkhet Solutions is the next step in commercializing this technology and ensuring it reaches the critical infrastructure operators who need it most, while continuing to create meaningful long-term opportunities for local stations.”
Serving as Merkhet Solutions’ CEO is none other than Sam Matheny, the longtime NAB leader who has made BPS’s rollout his ultimate professional goal. “BPS solves a problem we can no longer afford to ignore: an entire economy and national security posture resting on a single, contested signal from space,” he said. “We built BPS at NAB because broadcast infrastructure is uniquely suited to deliver assured terrestrial timing at scale. We’re launching Merkhet Solutions because the time to operationalize this technology is now.”
