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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I think that's a very good summary of the key points,
Ian.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Sadly, however, I think the listening public and
radio industry alike have been done a huge disservice by one of the worst-ever
strategic decisions by Ofcom and the BBC to stick with DAB and not make the
break to DAB+ back in 2006-7. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>This isn't the wisdom of hindsight - it was
obvious by then, even from the sidelines, that DAB was on a roadmap to
nowhere (especially for cars!), being too expensive with limited
capacity/quality. To expert analysts it must have been painfully evident at
the time, but marketing and face-saving forces prevailed over the following
years.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Ed Vaizey talked about how vital digital radio is to
bringing greater choice, but DAB in many areas such as ours actually
offers reduced choice and reduced coverage compared with analogue. We
have the ludicrous situation in Scotland that the BBC multiplex doesn't even
have the capacity to bring us the two BBC national services Radio Scotland and
Radio nan Gaidheal! In some dense urban areas the BBC leases
space on commercial multiplexes to carry the national programmes, but the
vast of the country is too lightly populated to be of interest to
commercial multiplexes.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I well remember the shudders that went through Ofcom and
the BBC representatives when the idea of switching to DAB+ was raised years ago,
as they feared damaging DAB set sales which were not so much taking off as
limping along the runway on one engine. Of course that was a
poorly grounded fear, as it would have taken time anyway to introduce DAB+
to the transmission plans and for the chipsets to be ready, and in any event new
rollout of DAB+ would be in areas that had previous had no DAB service at all,
so no existing set owners would have been disenfranchised. They could even have
built in the cost of a trade-in amnesty for 'old' digital sets (now, where have
I heard that idea before?)!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Seems to me that what really stopped this sensible
adjustment to the plan was lack of political and corporate to take the right
path despite the PR difficulties and having to swallow the technical, financial
and emotional investment they had already sunk. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>That's all water under the bridge now, of course, but I
still think the change to DAB+ is simply inevitable, and the sooner the better
for everyone. We are doing no-one any favours by continuing to delay the
inevitable DAB+ day. Across the UK as a whole only 15% of listeners are
using the service after several years of heavy marketing, and here in the
north-west of Scotland it would hurt no-one at all for the roll-out to be
DAB+. We could have provided an excellent low-risk test bed for
DAB+ implementation, and it would have allowed listeners to have
the full set of BBC national channels from day one.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>It's good that future DAB sets will be mandated to support
DAB+ and to incorporate FM into the EPG, but much more could be done to
encourage take up, in particular extending the integration of FM so that it too
has live pause and rewind, and programme inforamtion such as 'now playing'.
These facilities are all technically trivial to implement with modern chipsets
and RDS, and would require no significant additional production or transmission
infrastructure. Maybe the reason there is no great desire in the
industry for this is because it would highlight how little genuine
advantage DAB really offers over FM in return for the reduced audio quality
needed to achieve economic programme capacity.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>It's quite surprising that the EU hasn't yet required
harmonization of future radio standards - it might have been something with
rather more consumer benefit than this daft Video on Demand directive's proposed
implementation!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Onward and upward(?)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Alex</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>
<HR>
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=1>It's getting more and more complicated - mostly because the
people who are spouting in public either don't understand what's happening or
are using inappropriate words because they seem to be
fashionable.<BR> <BR>I would summarise as follows:<BR> <BR>National
and Regional broadcasters want to move over to a digital radio broadcast format
and would be content for their services on FM to cease once enough listeners
have digital radio receivers.<BR> <BR>However, the present DAB format is
incompatible with the systems proposed by most other countries and existing
DAB receivers won't be able to resolve broadcasts using other countries'
formats.<BR> <BR>The proposed new "multichip" receivers would be
capable of decoding DAB and a range of other digital
formats.<BR> <BR>Motor manufacturers in particular are declining to
equip new vehicles with DAB receivers and and are understandably reluctant to
offer OE digital receivers until some form of standardisation
evolves.<BR> <BR>Set up and administered as it is, use of the existing DAB
network is inappropriate and expensive for small broadcasters who are generally
content to remain on FM.<BR> <BR>There will eventually be a "digital
switchover" of major services (implying cessation of their parallel FM
broadcasting) once there is universal agreement as to what format will be used
in the UK and other countries. This is unlikely to be achieved by 2015 with
progress as seen at the moment.<BR> <BR>There will not be a general "FM
switchoff" (or "switching off the FM signal" as the BBC seems to like to put it)
at all because there simply is no need for it.<BR> <BR>Ian
Hickling</FONT><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>