[cma-l] The BBC to fund DAB coverage up to 97%.

[Ian Hickling]

I didn't see the original announcement.
So - does this mean that the BBC and presumably H M Government still pushing the ancient Eureka 147 format - which is effectively extinct except for the UK?
Or is the term "DAB" used here meant to be a synonym for "Digital Radio"?
I think we need to have this clarified.

------------------------------------
Ian Hickling
Partner
transplan UK
 




From: tlr at gairloch.co.uk
To: clive.glover at lineone.net
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:23:11 +0100
CC: cma-l at commedia.org.uk
Subject: Re: [cma-l] The BBC will fund taking DAB up to 97% coverage





Exactly Clive.

I note that the no doubt very carefully worded BBC statement says "national DAB coverage". This almost certainly deliberately excludes rolling out the "local" DAB coverage which the commercial companies are also refusing to fund.


So there is another subtle shift in policy here - the "switchover" (as they still insist on calling it down in Whitehall) will now be triggered when digital listening on national services reaches the appropriate limit. 
 
What's more, here in Scotland not having a commercial multiplex means also not having all the BBC National services. 
 
In areas with no commercial multiplex we get no BBC Radio Scotland on DAB (really!) nor BBC Radio nan Gaidheal (the national Gaelic service). This is because the single BBC DAB multiplex is already stretched to the max capacity/min quality limits to carry the England-based services. 
 
In highly populous areas, such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, the BBC gets round the problem by renting extra capacity for these services on commercial multiplexes, but of course it can't do that anywhere in the north/northwes of the UK where there are no commercial multiplexes.
 
It also means we don't get the regional news opt-outs from the national Radio Scotland service that we currently get at peak times on FM.
 
They could have sorted all this by using the northwest as a pilot area for DAB+.

Alex
 
 
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