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Child Item

RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network

GerardKeating

RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network.

Given they are the only broadcaster on DAB, is there any future for DAB in Ireland now, or is that a play to get the Government to "do something"..

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[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You are like a bloke seeing a bumble bee saying it won't fly while it flies.
DAB+ is a great service and I'd expect it in any new car. 'tis the Bee's Knees.
If I had one complaint it is that there is just too much choice of stations here.

MOD - possibly not intended, but make sure that things don't get personal here on the thread. Thanks.

Andy454

I think the situation has actually turned on its head in the six months which shows a complete lack of foresight.

The last week has been an eyeopener for me, my brother subscribed to Disney+ with Star, the content catalogue is enormous, coupled with Netflix, soon HBO Max, Amazon prime and Apple TV+ to a lesser extent, I am considering cutting the cord with Sky (after 30+ years!).
I ran through the sky guide on Friday night and none of the pay tv channels had anything I would watch and since Brexit causing Sky to remove most of the radio and music channels from the guide, the poor way in which HD channels are shoved to 340+ because an Irish advertisement HD version isn't available, makes me feel like they have no interest in my subscription - plus the incessant repetition of ads on the Irish variants (it looks like they only have two ads, Vodafone and Bank).

Cable and Satellite pay TV is in decline, the fact Amazon, Netflix and Disney+ have no ads, makes me think that Free to air TV and Radio will very much be the choice to supplement the streaming services for live TV. The fact that RTE haven't capitalised on this beggars belief.

At a time when DAB and DTT should be poised to take over the broadcast TV and radio advertising market, they are in a tale spin to closure.

I've had satellite since 1990, D2 Mac, Videocrypt and Cryptovision were just analogue encryption formats used at the time (circa 20 years) to encrypt tv stations, they had their day when analogue ceased, (or really just changed to the digital equivalent, Videoguard, nagravision and conax.

DAB can't be compared to an outdated technology, it is a broadcast format, phone streaming will always be unstable, not so much driving through blackspots but actually through good spots with busy transmitters, data always comes third to voice and sms. While I had vodafone in the past and it was brilliant for streaming radio prior to covid, I find driving around now I meet a lot of busy spots, probably where people are relying on mobile broadband for working from home.

The fact remains, we the licence payer have paid for the DAB transmitter hardware, we are turning off hundreds of thousands of euros of investment to save a few pennies on electricity, can they not stick a few ads on and cover their cost?

When RTE Gold was threatened with closure there was a large backlash against it, so I would have thought that that proved DAB had greater penetration than they originally thought - where does the data from these reports come from?

rdhma

I bought a Seat - also part of V.A.G. in 2014 and specified DAB on the options.

Listen on DAB all the time in the car, so this is an unwelcome development.

NeuralNetwork

From WorldDAB:

Total cumulative sales of DAB devices:

Ireland: 400,000
UK: 44,905,000
France: 3,420,000
Germany : 16,623,000
Norway: 7,000,000 devices

Countries that have ceased DAB services:

Finland, Portugal, Canada, Hungary, Hong Kong

New Zealand went through tests but never launched, winding up the tests in 2018. Not sure what the status of it is now.

TheBMG

Pete Best wrote: »

Surely, most new cars in the Republic of Ireland have DAB/DAB+ fitted ?
.

You’d think so but .. nope. I got a VW Golf two years ago and no DAB.

VW are notorious about getting punters to pay for all the extras but it turns out that it’s not even an option or add-on over here.

It’s always possible to swap out the non-DAB entertainment system for one with the DAB chip installed but that’s pricey as bejaysus

Mullaghteelin

In North County Dublin, FM is at full capacity with a myriad of Ireland + Northern Ireland stations, and their various relays, taking up the full spectrum. Any rogue gaps that survive are snapped up by Dublin pirates. For this reason alone DAB should be kept on as an option.

NeuralNetwork

My point was more that due to the market circumstances in Belgium, DTT was shut down (in Flanders anyway) the same has happened in parts of Switzerland, and again it's because it's a different setup there to large neighbouring countries like France and Germany.

Ireland also struggled to get anything beyond a simple replacement for PAL on air because nobody wanted to invest in a commercial DTT platform here as the cable/sat (and now IPTV) uptake is way too high. The UK, France etc were far more dependent on terrestrial TV, so you had an instant, large and viable market for channels wanting to go on FreeView (even if its encrypted predecessor was a mess too.)

DAB here is limited by what's commercially possible here too.

RTE has limited choices. They can throw money at a technology platform nobody seems to want to use, or they can invest in radio shows. Seems a bit of a no brainer to me.

TAFKAlawhec

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Preserving FM here is vital though. I wouldn’t like to see a situation where broadcasting goes entirely online. In Belgium for example, DTT has been switched off and there’s now almost total reliance on cable & IPTV.

DTT hasn't been switched off altogether in Belgium - what happened was a couple of years ago VRT (the PSB in Flanders) shut down their FTA DTT network in Flanders; a DTT subscription service there then opted to carry the VRT TV channels as a result. In Wallonia, their French language sister RTBF continues broadcasting on a single multiplex...

https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=MUX-BELGIQUE&liste=2&live=12&lang=en

...in Flanders it was reckoned that only approx. 40,000 people (less than 1% of the pop.) were relying on DTT to watch VRT programming, so the justification wasn't too difficult to shut down their FTA DTT transmissions. Cable is near ubiquitous in Belgium but in the few locations that are not served, satellite pay-TV is available via TV Vlaanderen which carries VRT channels (I don't know if a satellite FTV scheme is in place there).

NeuralNetwork

Norway has a very different structure of radio broadcasting, with very heavy dominance by NRK.

NRK P1, P2 and P3 as well as 11 other NRK channels.

DAB / DAB+ seems to suit markets that were much more highly centralised around one big operator and regulated than ours. The ILRs here own their own infrastructure and are extremely reluctant to replace that with purchasing space on what would end up being, in reality, an RTE owned piece of infrastructure or one owned by some private operator where they will end up with ongoing overheads that they did not have with FM.

The licensing regime for launching a new station here is burdensome, but you'd have to ask yourself what other community stations are going to come on board?

When there was a second MUX in Cork for example, it ended up being full of religious stations and very little else that was actually listenable.

In the cities, you've already got community radio stations on air successfully using FM since the mid 1990s and there are other examples of those in various rural areas. In all cases they simply manage their own infrastructure.

From what I can see of it DAB suits a market where you've a very dominant PSB like BBC or NRK and maybe a number of national networks that are in single ownership.

If we could spin up some cheap, local DAB infrastructure, maybe it might have done something but that's not how it's evolved and there was plenty of commercial and non-commercial effort put into doing that over the last few years and all of it has amounted to nought.

And as for FM being developed in 1935, it's not obsolete because it's a ubiquitous, cheap technology that's likely to be supported for decades to come. DAB on the other hand is a 1980s technology that's quite bolted to certain business models that seem not to exist here.

You're not going to get 100% perfect coverage with 4G/5G, but then you're also not going to get that with FM or DAB. There are always going to be the odd spot here and there with bad reception. Overall, the mobile networks are pretty solid at this stage for streaming. I have driven around the country (pre lockdown) with various streaming services running without any issue and with podcasting, you're talking about content that's quickly downloaded and has no streaming element at all. Fast, at home broadband is ubiquitous. If you live in a situation where you don't have access to it, you're very much the exception these days and those needs are being met by the National Broadband Scheme and other rollouts of better tech.

Some technologies are dead end and broadcasting and telecoms are full of them. For example, the MAC, D2MAC standards for potential higher definition TV and improving PAL never really took off beyond a few niche markets, again often driven in Nordic countries with more central planning, they were wiped out in the UK by cheaper PAL services on Astra, despite it being much older technology and the IBA in the UK driving the services.

There were dead ends in areas like telecommunications around loads of technologies that were, in isolation and on paper, good solutions.

It doesn't mean that those technologies aren't adopted somewhere or some markets or that they were fundamentally bad tech, but they aren't going to be the global success stories and they will fail in certain market scenarios like here, where you're really looking at a commercially driven radio market in a small, low density population.

In an Irish market context, HDRadio (as used in the US and now Canada where it replaced DAB) would have probably made more sense, by allowing broadcasters to extend their FM services with supplemental digital services carried along side them. They wouldn't have had to buy in to someone else's infrastructure, so basically you just ended up extending the FM system and opening up some interesting options. However, we're in Europe and stuck with DAB as it become the de facto digital radio standard.

Insidethetent

Replace the Dublin City FM ( or whatever it's called these days) mountain site TX with a DAB MUX and put all the Dublin community radio stations on it, free up several frequencies in Dublin immediately. Add Oireachtas Radio to appease the politicians, Newstalk low-bitrate mono, and maybe a Tourist station..... just a suggestion....

Charles Babbage

If you have stations that are listened to by a significant part of the population then broadcast rather than streaming is an efficient way to deliver them. If you have 10s of thousands of people having to pay more for data packages then the taxpayers in aggregate haven't really saved anything although RTÉ has.

Andy454

If just a single BBC mux was available with the following stations BBC radio 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 live and 6 music - I wonder would the system suffer the same fate...

Andy454

I disagree with the closure of DAB radio and the assertion that this is outdated technology, FM is now outdated technology, invented in 1933!

The FM service should have been moved to DAB, Norway has completed transition to DAB and has switched off its FM system.

According to thejournal.ie €221 million was collected in 2018 by the licence fee alone, the transmission system needs to be segregated from RTE and a specific budget aimed at rolling out new technology and improving reception of all licenced broadcasters across the island of Ireland.

One mux after over 10 years is disgraceful, equipment for DAB is now cheaper, more efficient than ever, it should well be able to supplement / replace FM.

The issues and red tape associated with setup of even local services were highlighted over a year ago:

https://radiotoday.ie/2019/09/pirate-dab-multiplexes-take-to-the-air-in-dublin-and-cork/

Online services might be great, but mobile network coverage around the country is inconsistent, I struggle to get 2G mobile coverage in some areas which certainly wouldn't meet the demand for streaming radio, and while I started streaming radio along time ago using the phone to the car system, if the bulk of cars did this during peak morning and evening rush hours, the mobile networks would be unnecessarily congested.

radioguru02

Totally in favour of Ireland investing in DAB, particularly to allow more niche stations to broadcast on terrestrial, but I think the phone and smart speaker are even gradually taking over from the FM frequency.
Give it 20-25 years and, provided 4/5G can be rolled out everywhere, The vast majority of listening will be done online.
The reality is, we might be too late to the DAB party

NeuralNetwork

Deleted User wrote: »

You are like a bloke seeing a bumble bee saying it won't fly while it flies.
DAB+ is a great service and I'd expect it in any new car. 'tis the Bee's Knees.
If I had one complaint it is that there is just too much choice of stations here.

It's an entirely different market with 66 million vs 4.9 million and with a history of having pumped money into DAB and a much more all-encompassing publicly funded, non-commercial BBC range of services.

We couldn't even attract commercial TV companies to invest in getting onto DTT here due to the very high cable / sat penetration rates and lack of interest. SaorView is really just a direct replacement for analogue PAL services with a few minor extras. The main advantages of it is a huge step up in technical broadcast quality, something which wasn't missing in FM Stereo and isn't really enhanced by DAB.

The same pattern is occurring in Canada with DAB having been scrapped. It's only been successful in a handful of countries and it's been down to rather dominant public broadcasters driving the initial uptake.

RTE is basically a 50% commercial operator and its remit is to maximise use of licence fee for public service broadcasting, not to champion a particular technology. It didn't have the scope or scale to rollout umpteen DAB stations and commercial operators didn't seem to want to engage with the platform much at all and those who did never got very far.

There have been commercial trials on DAB here, some of which had absolutely nothing to do with RTE, including use of MiniMUXes and they've all been a flop.

If some other company wants to run a DAB+ network here, there's really not much stopping them other than commercial realities.

Larbre34 wrote: »

I have a DAB set in the kitchen. I like it. I have one mobile phone and one laptop both of which which I use for work on weekdays. I listen to the DAB while I work. I have absolutely no interest in bringing an alexa or google hub into the house.

There's no need to bring Alexa or Google into the house. Plug an old iPad or Android tablet or any decent old smart phone into your speaker system, load up TuneIN Radio or any radio player you like - not to mention Spotify, Apple Music, various podcast apps etc etc and you'll have a fantastic radio in your kitchen with a brilliant UI.

My old iPhone on a dock is my kitchen radio.

You can also buy various internet radios, although they're usually not that user friendly.

There are loads of ways of listening to streaming content, without using a smart speaker.

Larbre34

I have a DAB set in the kitchen. I like it. I have one mobile phone and one laptop both of which which I use for work on weekdays. I listen to the DAB while I work. I have absolutely no interest in bringing an alexa or google hub into the house.

DAB should be privatised and opened up to niche domestic services and overseas satellite radio providers like Sirius. RTÉ have no skills or no interest in operating the platform. After all, they're a broadcaster, not a telecomms network.

[Deleted User]

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Yeah, and they used Minitel in France until the early 2009, but it was still obsolete. Some people use Fax Machines in 2021 too, but it doesn't mean they're a viable platform to invest in.

DAB isn’t going to work if it’s only driven by RTE.

Radio here, including most of RTE’s output is commercial and DAB hasn’t managed to stack up as a business case and is going to fade.

NRK in Norway went the other way and shut down FM for national services, local ones remaining largely on FM. That’s a decision driven by policy rather than commercial realities.

The reality in Ireland is 80% of commercial radio is listened to on FM and 20% on digital platforms, of which 0.5% is DAB.
(Stats from a UK article - not sure of source)

It’s been a commercial failure in Canada too btw and several other markets which would have more in common with the shape of Irish commercial radio than the U.K. or Norway.

HD Radio in the US seemed to me like a more logical option, allowing stations to build on their existing FM offering, but given that we’re not in North America and DAB is the dominant digital over the air radio platform in the EU that’s never going to be used here.

To me DAB is very much a creature of big, public service broadcasters like BBC that dominate with a huge range of national, regional / local stations. It needed that scale to be driven and RTE really isn’t in that model of broadcasting nor does it have the resources to be.

The only places I see DAB being a success is where a top down policy decision was made to aim to switch off FM. Where it’s driven by commercial needs, it doesn’t stack up.

They’d be better off ensuring they’ve excellent peering to stream into the mobile networks and ISPs at this stage and focusing on programme making.

Preserving FM here is vital though. I wouldn’t like to see a situation where broadcasting goes entirely online. In Belgium for example, DTT has been switched off and there’s now almost total reliance on cable & IPTV.

While it might seem like a ludicrous situation now, give it 10 years and you could see a scenario emerging where very little over the air listening is going on.

You are like a bloke seeing a bumble bee saying it won't fly while it flies.
DAB+ is a great service and I'd expect it in any new car. 'tis the Bee's Knees.
If I had one complaint it is that there is just too much choice of stations here.

Former Former Former

Glaceon wrote: »

Sometimes that's unavoidable when you're out and about and between towns. Mobile coverage isn't universal unfortunately.

No, but mobile coverage will be universal long before any alternative broadcast system like DAB would be - because there is a demand for it and a commercial reward for private money that gets behind it. That simply was never going to be the case for DAB.

NeuralNetwork

Pete Best wrote: »

Last time I was down in Killarney and Galway, back in 2016/17, I found 4G reception fairly poor until I got quite close to Dublin, so I’m not sure if that has changed, but I’d imagine that would account for the low online listening figures.

4G/5G coverage is pretty good in the North.

West Cork, Kerry and parts of Galway are challenging for coverage even for FM and DTT due to the topology. The 4G/5G coverage in most areas is improving very rapidly, but it's not really something that would be saved by DAB, as you'd have similar coverage issues.

If you take West Cork for example, even for simple TV services 2RN (RTE) Mullaghanish transmitter needed 20 relays to cover just that one area. For UHF/Microwave links for UMTS/LTE signals it's even worse as they're practically line of sight. There are similar challenges in Donegal and parts of Scotland.

An area that can be covered with 10 sites in flatter terrain suddenly becomes a complex challenge with many times that number and then you've issues with access, visual impact, planning challenges, people taking illogical notions about 4G/5G etc etc, hence it just takes longer to get coverage rolled out in some of those areas. It's not a lack of spending.

NeuralNetwork

KReid wrote: »

I agree with pretty much all you've said here, I'm just curious as to where you got the stats for radio listening above?

They were in a quote from one of the articles I spotted earlier and could be possibly inaccurate.

JNLR is showing:

"The latest JNLR report, Radio in a Digital World, compiled by Ipsos/ MRBI, found that while 8% of the population in Ireland (330,000 people) are accessing radio stations via digital means, the smallest number in this cohort opt for DAB.

According to the report, just under 5% of adults in Ireland listen to radio via a mobile device, 2% listen on a PC, around 1.5% listen on a smart speaker, 0.6% listen on a TV set and 0.5% DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting). 77% of adults in Ireland listen to radio on FM"

Those kinds of stats are rarely all that accurate, as you're relying on surveys and self-reporting.

Another survey by CORE is showing "38% of the 1,000 adults surveyed said they had tried at least one audio streaming service for the first time since the advent of Covid-19 restrictions, which had the effect of denting the amount of time people spent listening to car radios."

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/podcasts-and-spotify-thrive-as-pandemic-changes-listening-habits-1.4349891

I'd reckon the stats can be interpreted differently to make radio look better, by excluding non-linear broadcasting i.e. podcasts, and replacement of music radio by streaming services entirely, which probably far bigger a challenge to most stations than is being interpreted in some of the JNLR type surveys.

0.5% market share is utterly abysmal though for DAB, no matter what way you look at the figures up that just isn't sustainable.

The most important thing for radio in Ireland is that the investment is going into programme making and getting creative output out there be it on air or online and that we continue to have a vibrant radio sector.

I really don't see much of a future for generic, rotational playlist based music stations in a world of Spotify, Apple Music, etc. I mean that's pretty much what's already happened to MTV - it's more or less gone.

What will survive is either really high quality DJ driven music shows that bring you on a bit of a voyage of discovery and obviously speech based programming that actually has some relevance to an audience. That's where RTE should be spending its money and effort.

end of the road wrote: »

realistically it's not going to be possible ultimately to protect fm, times are changing and people are very slowly but surely voting with their feet, as fm just cannot offer the choice of stations and content that a lot of people want, especially in the commercial sector where diversity is stifled and the regulator who is supposed to nurture such has decided to protect the existing stations and the ridiculously expensive regulatory model over providing the listener with what they want.
while fm is currently the main listening method, apart from certain acceptions, a lot of people are listening because there is little to no option either at that time, or at all because they aren't in an area with good braudband (hopefully the national braudband scheme will address this)
so if the people move to online, and we aren't going to license a new terrestrial platform whether it be DAB+ or something newer should that exist, then realistically we cannot continue to prop up an old technology and an old style regulatory model which only serves existing operators, ultimately listener choice and competition whether that be online or something else, will win in the end regardless and we will need to face that reality and accept that terrestrial radio will be no more.

I don't agree that it would be just left to absolute market forces in a situation like that. It's inevitable that we will head towards almost exclusively online broadcasting, but I think there is a public service and even public safety motive for keeping some level of terrestrial broadcasting on air both for radio and TV, even if it ultimately just ended up as a couple of national FM channels, it does make some sense to preserve that.

I could see FM broadcasting ending up something akin to the way some public service broadcasters have kept MW/LW services on air, despite small numbers of listeners.

There's no point in getting bogged down on discussions of a particular delivery platform. All of them are just a means to an end - i.e. getting audio programming to an audience. Whether it's FM, DAB or online the programming and sustaining or growing an audience is what matters.

KReid

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Yeah, and they used Minitel in France until the early 2009, but it was still obsolete.

DAB isn’t going to work if it’s only driven by RTE.

Radio here, including most of RTE’s output is commercial and DAB hasn’t managed to stack up as a business case and is going to fade.

NRK in Norway went the other way and shut down FM for national services, local ones remaining largely on FM. That’s a decision driven by policy rather than commercial realities.

The reality in Ireland is 80% of commercial radio is listened to on FM and 20% on digital platforms, of which 0.5% is DAB.

I agree with pretty much all you've said here, I'm just curious as to where you got the stats for radio listening above?

end of the road

realistically it's not going to be possible ultimately to protect fm, times are changing and people are very slowly but surely voting with their feet, as fm just cannot offer the choice of stations and content that a lot of people want, especially in the commercial sector where diversity is stifled and the regulator who is supposed to nurture such has decided to protect the existing stations and the ridiculously expensive regulatory model over providing the listener with what they want.
while fm is currently the main listening method, apart from certain acceptions, a lot of people are listening because there is little to no option either at that time, or at all because they aren't in an area with good braudband (hopefully the national braudband scheme will address this)
so if the people move to online, and we aren't going to license a new terrestrial platform whether it be DAB+ or something newer should that exist, then realistically we cannot continue to prop up an old technology and an old style regulatory model which only serves existing operators, ultimately listener choice and competition whether that be online or something else, will win in the end regardless and we will need to face that reality and accept that terrestrial radio will be no more.

NeuralNetwork

[Deleted User] wrote: »

An obsolete technology that everyone uses around here.

Yeah, and they used Minitel in France until the early 2009, but it was still obsolete. Some people use Fax Machines in 2021 too, but it doesn't mean they're a viable platform to invest in.

DAB isn’t going to work if it’s only driven by RTE.

Radio here, including most of RTE’s output is commercial and DAB hasn’t managed to stack up as a business case and is going to fade.

NRK in Norway went the other way and shut down FM for national services, local ones remaining largely on FM. That’s a decision driven by policy rather than commercial realities.

The reality in Ireland is 80% of commercial radio is listened to on FM and 20% on digital platforms, of which 0.5% is DAB.
(Stats from a UK article - not sure of source)

It’s been a commercial failure in Canada too btw and several other markets which would have more in common with the shape of Irish commercial radio than the U.K. or Norway.

HD Radio in the US seemed to me like a more logical option, allowing stations to build on their existing FM offering, but given that we’re not in North America and DAB is the dominant digital over the air radio platform in the EU that’s never going to be used here.

To me DAB is very much a creature of big, public service broadcasters like BBC that dominate with a huge range of national, regional / local stations. It needed that scale to be driven and RTE really isn’t in that model of broadcasting nor does it have the resources to be.

The only places I see DAB being a success is where a top down policy decision was made to aim to switch off FM. Where it’s driven by commercial needs, it doesn’t stack up.

They’d be better off ensuring they’ve excellent peering to stream into the mobile networks and ISPs at this stage and focusing on programme making.

Preserving FM here is vital though. I wouldn’t like to see a situation where broadcasting goes entirely online. In Belgium for example, DTT has been switched off and there’s now almost total reliance on cable & IPTV.

While it might seem like a ludicrous situation now, give it 10 years and you could see a scenario emerging where very little over the air listening is going on.

KReid

[Deleted User] wrote: »

An obsolete technology that everyone uses around here.

How many people stream through a smart speaker OR Mobile as opposed to use DAB?

My understanding of listening habits here suggest that the amount of people who tune in. Via the Internet makes DAB very much so obsolete in this country.

In time, listeners will switch more and more to Internet based listening across the globe, it's not practical to have several DAB enabled devices.

Glaceon

ford fiesta wrote: »

Streaming is fine with a half decent broadband connection! Sounds like you're in an area with a poor connection.

Sometimes that's unavoidable when you're out and about and between towns. Mobile coverage isn't universal unfortunately.

[Deleted User]

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

As a technology, it’s basically obsolete.

An obsolete technology that everyone uses around here.

NeuralNetwork

It was nothing to do with RTE not wanting to compete. They were very enthusiastic about DAB but the commercial FM stations had no interest or even saw it as a commercial threat, brining more competitors into their FM fiefdoms.

The reason DAB was successful in the U.K. was because BBC drove it for years, with no need to justify what it was spending.

As a technology, it’s basically obsolete.

Like it or not, streaming services are where it’s at. We’ve relatively little issue steaming in cars, and that will get better and better as time goes on.

Car user interfaces are also getting better with Apple CarPlay & Google Drive and better voice interaction etc

You’ve fairly ubiquitous fast, affordable broadband and a massive rural broadband scheme rolling out too and couple that with virtually 100% smartphone ownership.

I think RTE are making the right call here. It’s one of those technologies that is dead end - like Minidiscs.

Or for example, if you take something like Minitel, a hugely successful interactive online service using simple terminals launched in France in the early 80s. It was launched in Ireland by a consortium of Telecom Éireann, France Telecom, AIB & Credit Lyonnais but, much like DAB it was an old technology and fell flat on its face here being wiped out by the early internet. It was successful in France because it was both launched a bit earlier and it was driven hard by a state owned company, PTT/France Telecom. In Ireland it was expected to run commercially, and the market changed and it didn’t get much traction.

The fact that DAB is a success in the U.K. is a bit like the way Minitel was a success in France. It’s irrelevant in an Irish context and technology has moved way, way beyond it.

Put the money into development of good online audio programming and stop flogging a dead horse.

Analog FM is likely to be on air for decades yet. It’s simple, ubiquitous, produces decent quality and very competent at what it does.

jrmb

I bought a DAB radio in 2008 so I'd be ready for the future. Any chance of a refund?

[Deleted User]

Isn't this a way to curtail competition. It is a platform which RTE now don't need to compete on and which others won't compete on now either.
Switching channels in DAB isn't like switching between presets on FM band where RTE Radio 1 has pride of place at button no. 1 on your car's radio.
It could be possibly be a conspiracy theory because half of me tells me that RTE don't even get the possibilities of DAB.

The Cush

It's unfortunate this news has come within days of the announcement that the national commercial stations were changing ownership to a company with a big interest in UK DAB radio, the Bauer Media Group. This could have been the closest the stations have come to have an interest in DAB.

Bauer has a 30% holding in Sound Digital, the second UK national commercial DAB multiplex and operates 15+1 wholly owned local DAB multiplexes, and jointly owns a further three with Global Radio.

Add to that all new cars sold in the EU this year must have a digital radio tuner - https://www.worlddab.org/system/news/documents/000/011/019/original/EECC_factsheet_Feb_21_.pdf?1612347312

This from an analysis piece in the SBP by Willie O'Reilly

Bauer also believes in supporting new technology. Its radio stations are available on FM, through the internet and on DAB. The latter technology is used only by RTÉ, yet under EU legislation, every car sold from 2021 onwards has to have a DAB radio installed. And that's on top of the thousands vehicles imported from Britain each year with DAB pre-installed. Bauer may take a view on our tardiness and give DAB the push it needs to be successful.