For the past few years, RTÉ and a number of commercial stations including our own All 80s and Mocha R’n'B stations, have been running trial DAB broadcasts in the Dublin area. This trial ends in a few days with good news and bad news.

The good news is that RTÉ have aquired a full DAB licence and launch six full services from Monday. The bad news is that commercial stations such as ourselves are still waiting for legislation to be passed to enable us to do the same. While we wait the trial licence has expired so we have to come off the air.

It is unfortunate the necessary legislation was not in place by the end of the trial. The trial was a huge success not only technically but enjoyed hugely positive feedback from the listeners with DAB in the Dublin area. We expect the new Broadcasting Bill to be passed shortly and our hope is to be broadcasting on DAB again as soon as next year.

In the meantime we continue to operate with our cable television partners and of course on-line. To keep up to date on developments on DAB in Ireland, subscribe to our RSS feed here.

Radio people get very excited about DAB and it’s ability to offer more radio stations. One of the key drivers for DAB consumers is the amount of new stations available. This in itself though is not enough.Completely ignored is DAB’s ability to transmit data. This could be as simple as displaying the name of a song playing now on air, the name of the programme or guest currently being interviewed. It can expand to a full EPG showing all the programmes on a station during the day. Best yet is the ability to send pictures using Slideshow or interactive mini-websites with Broadcast Website that people can see right there on a small screen on their radio.

We live in a world where the iPhone or the Nokia N95 have set the standards for portable media devices. Where has radio progressed on these devices? The N95 will display the station frequency and the iPhone doesn’t have radio.

This is where the real danger lies for radio.

We have a great product. A medium that can create magic, that touches people in a unique emotive way, that’s instant, portable and allows you to do other things while you listen. If we don’t present radio to the same standard people are enjoying their mp3 music then we will suffer.

Radio needs to go colour.

Start thinking about DAB as a way to present radio as amazing audio coming from a speaker with programme related information displayed on a colour screen. After you get over thinking how “cool” that would be start thinking how much more an advertiser will pay to have their logo or pitch displayed on this screen. Start thinking about a whole raft of new advertising opportunities this presents and the euro’s you will see … in full colour of course.

In October key proponents of DAB from around the world gathered in London for the Digital Radio Show conference. It was held in the Armouries Hall in London with a rather unique wall display as you can see above! The result of the conference was some real information being exchanged on how DAB is progressing worldwide and the following are some notes I made while attending.

Greg Watson -MuxCo
In the UK it costs approx £20m a year to run all the DAB mux transmitters. The cost is high for two reasons. First is because the UK were so early on DAB they’re stuck with very high initial cap ex costs. The second is initial frequency planning called for lots of low powered transmitters rather than more efficient high power sites.

Adam Bowie - Absolute Radio
Though Absolute Radio is mainly licenced to broadcast on AM nationally and FM in London, 40% of their audience listen on separate digital platforms. 40%.

John Ousby/James Cridland - BBC
The BBC are touting a new idea for radio called “tagging”. Basically a listener presses a “tag” button on their radio when they hear something that interests them. The radio will capture whatever is displayed on the radios screen for later viewing. This could be the name of a song or an advertisers phone number. More at radiodns.org

For radio via the DTT “Freeview” system, both the BBC and commercial operators have an on-screen display that updates with changes to the programme (ie song title etc). BBC system overhead is less that 256k for all networks.

Martin Charman - Ondas Media
Satellite radio is coming to Europe with an XM type service by 2012. The service is capable of delivering 150 niche music stations with dj links being handled similar to satellite tv’s regional opt-outs so listeners will hear dj’s in their own language.

Mike Taylor - AIME
On mobile phones in May 2008, 22% of people used their phone to listen to music, 55% to take a photograph and 25% to capture a short video. People were advised to design a version of their station website for viewing specifically on a mobile phone.

Thomas Waechter - MediaBroadcast GmbH
Germany has 83m people and is the worlds third biggest economy. They are re-newing their development of DAB in 2009. Key to success is a clear message to listeners on advantage of DAB and getting receivers in cars. The German regulator is pushing for a national mux that will carry exisiting PSB and private stations not currently available nationwide.

Olaf Korte, Fraunhofer Germany
Fraunhofer state that AAC heard online is not the same as AAC broadcast on DAB+. With overhead etc they recommend a bit-rate of 64k for stereo.

Joren Jensen, NRK
In Norway, too many mountains means a lot of transmitters. For this reason they are forced to choose between FM and DAB as it’s not financially feasible to run both. They’ve opted for DAB and plan to switch off FM by 2014.

Christian Kjeldsen, DAB Digital Radio Denmark
In Denmark there has been a ten times increase in DAB ownership between 2006 and 2008. The Danes have learned that forming a cross-industry group is key to development. This group oversee’s standards, transmission costs, royalty costs and corals political support. The group includes PSB, commercial broadcasters, retailers and manufacturers.