[cma-l] Germany switches to DAB+

[Two Lochs Radio]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Martin Steers 
  Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 1:58 PM
  Subject: Re: [cma-l] Germany switches to DAB+


  Long term DAB+ might be the future of DAB based radio (cant really use digital as includes DTV and Internet)..


  However as I have said a few times to anyone will listen, we are stuck with DAB for the long haul, and whilst government and the radio sector* in general are pushing for it then thats all that can happen, and we must all work together to grow the audience, because if it fails it fails for all.

Yes, we are where we are with DAB, but I don't accept at all that it need be for the long term or that it is for the best to continue ploughing what is become an increasingly dead end furrow. Ironically, the thing that could really ensure the future success of the floundering DAB is acknowledging that DAB was strategically a dead end and making the most rapid practicable transition to DAB+ as we can.

We are not talking hindsight here - there is a continuing opportunity, and an imperative to move to DAB+ which has been apparent for several years now. A really good point to have made the break would have been a couple of years back as roll-out started to the north/west coast of Scotland. Here we have no installed base of DAB receivers to be upset (and all new car radios can receive DAB+ anyway).  It's also been apparent to numerous other countries who were only a year or so behind us in implementing DAB.

As it is, we now have the farcical situation of the BBC spending a fortune rolling out a DAB network that doesn't even have the capacity in this region to carry two of the national BBC channels (BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio nan Gaidheal) let alone any local channels or regional opt-outs. The only parts of Scotland where all the national networks are available on DAB are in the most highly populated areas where the BBC can rent spare capacity on commercial multiplexes (at further ongoing expense).

It does also beg the question of what exactly the government means when it talks about one of the prequisites for FM switch-off being that DAB has equivalent or better coverage. Are they going to factor in that DAB in large swathes of the country only provides 4 of the 6 national channels currently available on FM? By that measure it will never achieve equal coverage on the current plans.

Looking only at the question of technical signal coverage rather than programme service to the population, I note that Ofcom is currently consulting on the possibility of reducing the standards for what signal level/availability is regarded as providing satisfactory DAB coverage. This will of course have the coincidental effect of increasing the reported DAB coverage at a stroke - how handy!

And as if all that weren't enough, of course for a given bandwidth DAB+ produces markedly better audio quality that DAB, and can allow for local stations or opt-outs to be 'windowed' into the multiplexes at a local level. A no-brainer as they say!

It's not just Germany that has seen the writing on the wall. Spain too is weathering the transient embarrassment of implicitly acknowledging a mistake and has taken the plunge to migrate asap to DAB+, via a mixed economy so as not to waste all of the existing DAB investment. Italy gives it's broadvasters free choice of DAB, DAB+ or DRM. After some years of trying DAB it looks like they are also moving over to DAB+, with I think Rome already fully switched. Switzerland and the Netherlands look like following suite with moratoriums on DAB and anticpated switches to DAB+. Canada abandoned DAB last year, and Portugal has just done so. 

I honestly feel that this has been a massive failure of policy by Ofcom, the BBC and DCMS, and they have badly let down UK radio listeners (and the industry as a whole) by a lack of nerve and an unwillingness to put a necessary hand on the tiller in the last couple of years.

This is sad to contemplate at a time when UK radio audiences are at an 8-year high, depsite decades of prediction of its demise in the face first of TV and then the Internet.

Alex

   (*OK not all commercial are for it, some are against, and a lot are neutral or worse behind closed doors).

Actually quite a lot of commercial stations are not behind it, including two significant groups, and I suspect some of those that are neutral or publicly supportive support it only because they feel they have no choice in the face of policy from Ofcom, BBC, government and RadioCentre. 
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