SPONSORED CONTENT | Presented by Skyview Networks
For decades, network audio has reached radio affiliates by geostationary satellite, and for good reason. Satellite delivers one-to-many across broad geographic regions; it scales cost effectively for linear audio, and C-band in particular holds up in weather that would interrupt other paths.
It has served the industry exceptionally well. As Aaron Mellis, SVP of Technology at Skyview Networks, puts it: “The question is not whether IP distribution works. The question is whether you move to it on your timeline or the FCC’s.” Skyview’s answer is Cirocast, a cloud-native, hardware-agnostic IP audio distribution platform built to deliver what satellite delivers today, offered as a managed service.
That foundation is now moving.
The demand for 5g wireless capacity has steadily taken spectrum that satellite users depend on, and the FCC has already sold portions of the C-band, with real disruption to satellite operations across the country. On July 22, 2026, the Commission adopted rules to auction an additional 160 megahertz in the upper C-band, from 3.98 to 4.14 gigahertz, by July 2027. Auction winners in the top 75 U.S. markets are expected to commence new wireless service by December 2030, and the remaining markets by July 2031.
Incumbent satellite users will need to be off that spectrum before new wireless service goes live, which means the practical deadline for a network is not the auction date and not the service date; it is whenever the network’s own migration can realistically be designed, funded, tested, and completed across an entire affiliate base.
That is the arithmetic worth doing now. A network with several hundred affiliates is looking at a receiver fleet decision, a capital request, an integration plan with traffic and automation, affiliate communication, and a parallel run period where both paths are live. None of that compresses well, and none of it is a purely engineering conversation.
Four questions are worth putting on the table this quarter. Who owns the migration decision internally, and have engineering, sales, traffic, and general management all been in the same room? What does the current receiver fleet look like, and what is its remaining useful life? What would a transition cost, measured against the cost of staying where we are? And what capability do we gain in the move that we do not have today?
For most networks, the answer to all four runs through the same platform.
Cirocast is a managed service, which means Skyview engineers handle the infrastructure, the receiver fleet becomes hardware-agnostic and less expensive, and the capital tied up in satellite uplinks and permitting comes off the balance sheet. The capability gain is the one worth pausing on: where satellite sends the same signal to every affiliate, Cirocast builds a separate, individually customized stream for each one, with localized spot content and near real-time as-played reporting across the network.
That last question is the one most often skipped, and it is where the economics get interesting.
The full white paper walks through the technology, the transition, and the return. Download it, or schedule a demonstration with a Cirocast sales engineer here.
This sponsored content was produced in partnership with Skyview Networks.
