swXtch.io is launching a managed Global SRT Distribution service and native multicast transport at IBC 2026. These services aim to provide broadcasters with scalable, IP-based alternatives to satellite C-band distribution for live sports, news, and REMI production.
The introduction of native multicast over IP addresses a primary technical hurdle for broadcasters looking to exit expensive satellite contracts. By replicating the one-to-many efficiency of satellite on flexible IP infrastructure, swXtch.io provides a viable path for terrestrial distribution of high-stakes live content like sports and news. This shift signals a broader industry move toward software-defined networking where transport costs align with event duration rather than fixed infrastructure. As C-band spectrum becomes more constrained, the ability to maintain multicast workflows across public and private networks will be a critical differentiator for cloud-native broadcasters. Watch for adoption rates among regional sports networks seeking to lower egress fees while maintaining real-time visibility into stream health.
swXtch.io's Global SRT Distribution service enters a market where SRT has become the dominant live video transport protocol. Haivision's 2025 Broadcast Transformation Report, based on responses from nearly 900 broadcast professionals across 110 countries, found that SRT adoption grew from 68% in 2024 to 77% in 2025, widening its lead over RTMP at 58%. UDP Unicast/Multicast ranked third at 44%, underscoring that multicast workflows remain a significant portion of broadcast transport even as SRT gains ground. This data point is directly relevant to swXtch.io's positioning: the company is not replacing multicast but layering SRT reliability on top of it, addressing the gap between the two most-used transport methods in professional broadcast.
The competitive landscape for SRT-based distribution is intensifying among infrastructure vendors. In September 2025, Nevion, a Sony Group Company, added hardware-accelerated SRT support to its Virtuoso platform for transport over unmanaged networks, targeting broadcasters who need connectivity backup or ground-to-cloud workflows without dedicated managed WANs. That move signals growing demand for SRT as a transport protection mechanism in live production, particularly for premium sports content where Nevion Virtuoso already has established deployments. The SRT Alliance, founded by Haivision after it open-sourced the protocol in 2017, now includes over 600 members spanning Paramount, Cloudflare, Dolby.io, Chyron, JW Player, THEO Technologies, and EVS, giving swXtch.io a broad interoperability ecosystem for its managed distribution offering.
On the technical side, SRT's role in bonded cellular and remote production workflows continues to expand alongside its use in fixed distribution. Haivision's Pro460 transmitter, which uses the company's SST bonded cellular protocol, achieves end-to-end latency as low as 80 milliseconds from camera SDI output to production availability over private 5G networks, with StreamHub receivers supporting SRT, RTMP, NDI, and ST 2110 inputs. For swXtch.io, this matters because REMI production workflows increasingly combine bonded cellular contribution with SRT-based distribution, and the company's native multicast transport is designed to serve as the final hop in exactly those hybrid chains. The convergence of SRT at both the contribution and distribution layers strengthens the case for replacing satellite C-band with end-to-end IP transport.
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