By Brian Galante
Special to RBR+TVBR
It was first announced in October 2025 as a hub for the broadcast and media community, serving as a platform-agnostic, controlled environment to test alternatives to C-Band media transport and distribution. Now, USSI Global’s new Media Transport Solutions Lab has officially opened for business.
The lab lives on the company’s Melbourne, Fla., campus and is designed to assist and accelerate the transition from the auctioned C-Band frequencies with the company’s transitional or managed service offerings for broadcasters, MSOs, service providers, and network operators potentially affected by a second C-band clearing.
The first initiative, completed in 2023, cleared the lower 300MHz of the C-band’s 500MHz spectrum for mobile and emergency services, and relocated existing tenants to the remaining upper 200MHz. The proposed second clearing would clear, at minimum, 100MHz of the remaining spectrum and force remaining tenants.
At the lab, USSI has created an opportunity to build and test resilient workflows across satellite, IP and cloud platforms, including hybrid connectivity options. Results could range from a repack of satellite bands (such as C-Band and Ku) to IP-based distribution that would include fiber, cable, microwave, LEO constellation, and 4G/5G mobile or more likely, a hybrid combination of all the above.
Customers who book time in the lab begin by selecting connectivity strategies, redundancy models, and real-world scenarios to evaluate. Post-testing, customers have access to a wealth of information to review observations and findings, determine success, and analyze whether additional options require exploration.
“Our Media Transport Solutions Lab offers a secure and professional infrastructure to test theories and design approaches that identify resilient workflows without the time and expense of doing it in-house,” Anthony Morelli, President/CEO at USSI Global. “Our customers can configure and re-configure the lab environment with their own technology and third-party hardware, and execute their testing procedures both remotely and on-prem. Nothing else of this nature exists in our industry, and its arrival could not be timelier.”
