[cma-l] Community Radio and Digital Switchover

[Alan Coote]

It's not practical for the forseeable future to distribute radio over  
the internet to cars.

It's a very inefficient means of broadcasting, low quality,  
unreliable, and expensive.

Software defined radios which include FM, DAB, DRM(+) and WiFi are  
much more likely to happen.

For many reasons DRM and DRM+ are the better way to go for digital  
radio in the UK.

Alan

On 23 Jul 2009, at 13:12, Clive Glover <clive.glover at lineone.net> wrote:

> I noted that OFCOM have not actually defined "ultra-local" services
> and I assumed they really meant pirate broadcasters who they would
> just let rip in the "digital future" on the old-fashioned analogue
> systems!
>
> More seriously, we need to ensure that all radio sets in future
> continue to have both FM and "digital" facilities (including DAB+ and
> maybe DRM and DRM+ and whatever else turns up in future). It is those
> of us consumers (9 million of us!) with mere DAB as our "digital"
> facility that will lose out as DAB+ is clearly going to be the
> mainstream system across Europe and sooner or later the UK
> broadcasters will have to adopt it.  OFCOM previously argued for a
> "universal" radio that would find any local radio services and put
> them into an electronic programme guide so that local FM based
> Community stations would not lose out - we should push for that too.
>
> But the market reality is that the major "digital" format is streaming
> over the Internet and most Community Radio stations are already doing
> this so are on the same "level playing field" as the big commercial
> stations and the BBC. Companies in the US and Canada are already
> developing in car Internet radio systems and this is bound to happen
> within a few years. Internet access in cars will also provide satnav
> replacement services, traffic and weather services and so on and so
> will be a huge market for which companies will be fighting.
>
> Don't panic!
>
> Clive Glover
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