NetActuate Launches Media Substrate, a Global Transport Layer for Live Video

NetActuate launches the Media Substrate before IBC 2026, available today. Broadcasters send one stream and receive one stream. NetActuate's network runs the diverse paths beneath.

AMSTERDAM, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- NetActuate today launched the NetActuate Media Substrate, a managed transport layer for contribution-grade live video distribution that runs on the company's own global network. The Media Substrate gives broadcasters a redundant, instrumented path between markets without leasing circuits or stitching carriers together, and it is available now in the NetActuate Customer Portal under Networking.

The mechanics are simple from the customer side. A broadcaster sends one stream and receives one stream. Underneath it, NetActuate runs diverse paths across more than 45 locations worldwide, merges them at egress, and measures latency and continuity on every hop. In a blackout test, one path was taken fully dark and the merged output lost nothing.

That second path is the part the industry normally leaves to the customer to buy, configure and monitor. Here, the operator owns it, and there is nothing extra to procure in any market.

Broadcasters keep the encoders and protocols they already run. The substrate carries eleven of them unchanged, including SRT, RIST, UDP, MPTS, MoQ, ST 2022-7, SMPTE ST 2110, RTMP, WebRTC, WHIP and WHEP, and the ability to add more as needed. The protection comes from the network, so it works the same whichever protocol a broadcaster brings.

Latency depends on which two places a broadcaster is connecting, so NetActuate publishes a real figure for each route in the portal rather than one number for the whole network. Every path is measured end to end across NetActuate's own network, and the customer's own last mile is reported separately rather than blended in.

There are two tiers, and the difference is how much of it a broadcaster wants to control. Managed Media Substrate is the default and the faster of the two, running across NetActuate's existing footprint so a broadcaster is carrying traffic without a build. Custom Media Substrate is a dedicated deployment for broadcasters who want their own isolated footprint and a say in where it reaches, whether that is worldwide, North America only, or a named set of countries.

Two related services sell on the same network. The C-Band Transition Acceleration service gives United States broadcasters a terrestrial path off satellite ahead of the mandated upper C-band auction. The MoQ Relay is a managed Media over QUIC delivery network that works with the substrate but does not need it. All three will be demonstrated at IBC 2026.

"Every market we operate in has the same buyer with the same problem, which is getting a live feed from one place to another without building a network to do it," said Mark Mahle, CEO of NetActuate. "You send us one feed, we run two paths under it, and when one of them fails, nobody watching ever knows."

Because NetActuate runs its own autonomous system and BGP control plane, it can move a stream onto a better path while it is running, with nothing to change at the broadcaster's end. The company operates in more than 45 locations worldwide, including 22 in the United States and a presence in every major North American media market, on one of the largest globally-peered IPv4 and IPv6 networks. NetActuate does not sell encoders, applications, or content services.

The Media Substrate is available now in the NetActuate portal, with Managed for self service turn up and Custom upon request. NetActuate is working with leading broadcasters and media technology companies to carry live contribution and primary distribution traffic across the substrate.

About NetActuate
NetActuate delivers edge infrastructure and network solutions in over 45 locations worldwide, enabling customers to deploy workloads with low latency, resiliency, and security. The Open Network Edge (ONE) IaaS platform supports VMs, Kubernetes, cloud, colocation, bare metal, and storage infrastructure with Anycast connectivity. NetActuate provides 24x7 support, expert consulting, and flexible solutions engineered for scalability and performance. For more information, visit netactuate.com.

SOURCE NetActuate