RTÉ to cease radio transmission on DAB network

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

To be honest, you'd just walk into exactly the same issues no matter which technology is used for over-the-air digital radio here, i.e. that there was a serious lack of commercial interest in it and lack of scale to roll it out. RTE shouldering the whole thing makes no sense and was always going to end in shutdown if there was nobody else coming on board.

I would ask, why does there have to be commercial interest? One of the many many problems with radio today is the domination of the medium by pure commercial interests and that stranglehold is precisely what is wrong with Ireland's radio market, and this has been unchanged since 1989.

The smartest thing that the powers that be have ever done since that dreadful day, was allow for the licensing of non-commercial operators; those stations tend to be far more interesting to listen to also but they are strangled by regulations that seem to be designed to protect the commercial interests of the larger stations.

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

We had similar issues with getting commercial interest in DVB-T. There was a hope of getting some commercial services on that to compete with cable. Boxer TV and some other groups looked at it and didn't proceed. It could have easily been a replacement for MMDS, which in reality at the end was just an encrypted DVB-T network on 2,500 to 2,686 MHz. The MMDS receivers were in reality DVB-T (or C in some areas) service anyway, as the antennae just downconverted it to normal broadcast frequencies / cable frequencies.

The blame lies squarely on the BAI and to an extent, upon 2RN and Comreg. The conditions imposed upon anyone looking to launch a commercial Pay-TV service were punitive and they all rightly said "no thanks". The way spectrum is licensed in Ireland seems to be to extract the maximum amount of money from a potential user and to sit on it and not let anyone use it otherwise. How they've handled Digital Television here is a complete and utter farce.

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

However, the market changed and there was no interest. Satellite, cable and increasingly IPTV dominate.

Comreg also damaged the market (though admittedly to a degree their hands are tied) by taking way the 2.5/2.6GHz spectrum from UPC forcing them to close down their service and effectively giving Sky an effective monopoly on Pay-TV (it's more complicated than that though).

yrreg0850 wrote: »

The same mistake was made with the DAB infrastructure as was made previously with the telecoms network.
Teleom Eireann/Eircom etc. controlling the infrastructure could charge other telecomm operators ie .their competition what they liked for access to their network.
Likewise with DAB RTE could charge competition what they liked for access to their network.
In both cases an independent authority should have had control of the infrastructure.

If my recollection is correct, the infrastructure RTE have was originally used to operate a DAB trial in Dublin, it was modeled after the UK service where there would be one MUX for the public service broadcaster and additional multiplexes for the commercial broadcasters, a few Dublin stations were on this service at the time.

I suspect the Commercial broadcasters reasoned that their FM service was more than adequate, that DAB was an extra expense they would have to pay for and gave it a pass. RTE re-used those transmitters to expand the service they were currently running into other areas and just left them running without investing much of anything into it.

To point the blame at RTE is unfair here, they were not permitted to run advertising and as far as I know, not permitted to allow anyone else on the platform, it was sort of a long-term trial that got forgotten about. Your anger should be directed at the authors of the Broadcasting Act of 2009, this law specifically sets out the terms by which DTV and DAB multiplexes can be licensed and it is entirely under the remit of the BAI following the same process they currently do for licensing of FM Radio.

In fact one of the fears I have, would be a situation where a company like 2RN (formerly RTE Networks Ltd) or Arquiva were the sole operators of a local or national multiplex, that could then charge whatever they liked to those who might want to operate on the service as that would almost guarantee that smaller operators would have no chance, they would be priced right out of the market.

Hamsterchops wrote: »

A DAB trial should have been rolled out with government financial aid & approval across the FM network for all to trial, from RTE to Newstalk, to Today FM, FM 104, Sunshine Radio, 4FM etc, only then would the public have bought into the new format IMO.

There was a trial, that's how the whole thing got started some time in the late 00s if I remember.

Ger Roe wrote: »

why do we need regulation of our state approved radio services when we can actually listen to anything from anywhere at any time? Will the rollout of the national broadband plan result in a parallel decline in local radio listenership when many more people finally have reliable alternative sources?

Maybe for a different thread, but the demise of DAB has interesting aspects that should be further considered, particularly by current FM operators.

On the one end Comreg has its hands tied behind its back, so it's not able to side-step the BAI and the BAI is a victim of regulatory capture. On the other end the vast majority of the Irish Public don't care enough to make it an election issue - the only reason we have Beat FM in the south-east was because a youth radio service was made an election issue in the early 00s and as such it got attention, and as the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

At the end of the day, RTE closing down it's DAB service is a substantial disappointment, but it was perhaps inevitable and both a sign of shifting times and the stranglehold of commercial interests on the radio market.

To anyone saying that there was no interest outside of RTE, I have been looking for a licence to run a local multiplex and I am aware of two other parties that wanted to do the same thing - the fact remains that the BAI have no process in place for licensing DAB so they remain squarely to blame in my view for the lack of alternative services to what RTE were offering.

The process is also true for DTV, there are only two multiplexes and the cost of running a service on them is prohibitively expensive. There doesn't seem to be a process in place to licence a local or low-power DTV multiplex either so anyone looking to operate a local TV service has only one avenue: Pay Virgin Media to broadcast on cable.

IPTV got a mention, but that leads back to the oft touted alternative or future: Internet Streaming, with special mentions of Alexa and smart speakers. As I mentioned before however the unfortunate downside to live-streaming is that it starts out cheap but quickly ramps up to be prohibitively expensive to operate once you go over about 7,000 listeners (at 128k) or 28,000 (at 32k). IPTV works when it's a service provided by your ISP and there's no reason an ISP could not run a streaming platform in the same manner but would you want your ISP dictating what radio you can listen to?


The ultimate solution here is to rip up the Broadcasting Act of 2009 and replace it with something fit for purpose, recognise that the only way to breathe life into Irish Radio (or Irish Media generally) is to foster competition and remove artificial barriers to entry; otherwise what will happen is a continued trend where folks go elsewhere, and sadly, it's probably too late.

fryup wrote: »

all you people talking about sound quality,

i remember as a kid bopping to the tunes on Radio Luxembourg via a distorted MW signal, simpler times

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

On a small portable radio transistor!

well no, on a heap of sh1t hifi we had in the kitchen..like this one..it was a 2 in 1 radio with a record player on top...it used to play 33's too fast ah but we put up with it because we were easily pleased

Glaceon wrote: »

I only vaguely remember it but I do remember it had Radio Kerry on it. Showed up as DAB Ireland Mux 2.

That's true, I was talking to a Radio Kerry engineer years ago and he said the station was available in Dublin via DAB in mono form with excellent quality sound, simple technology but very expensive fees for carriage so it couldn't last.

dxhound2005 wrote: »

It was 566 kHz in those days, from Athlone. VHF was on a few transmitters outside of Dublin as well. If you buy an old radio from back then it will cover only 88 to 100 or 104. Nothing on the air under 100 MHz in the UK or here back then.

http://www.frequencyfinder.org.uk/Radio_1966.pdf

Incredible, thanks for that.

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

I definitely remember an old radio in my grandmother's house that couldn't tune to FM104 due to stopping at bang on 104.0 MHz

The UK used above 100 Mhz for emergency service communications including the police until the mid 80s.

88 Mhz and below was used by utility companies in Ireland until the mid 80s.

The first use of above 100 Mhz was by Pirates but high power transmissions where kept below 106 Mhz.

In 1989 Classic Hits 105.5 was due to be launched until their engineer turned up at the IRTC with a handful of radios that could not tune into 105.5 - hence Classic Hits 98FM .

The question that now arises is will the DAB spectrum be sold off ?

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

There’s no demand likely for those frequencies for DTT. You’d also end up needing different antennas to receive VHF, after do much effort was put into UHF.

They’ll just be parked.

In the US a lot of broadcasters have returned to Band III (and even Band I in some cases, but this isn’t in our spec) due to the FCC’s sell off of UHF spectrum. Unlikely to be needed here considering that we can barely even fill a two mux DTT system.

dxhound2005 wrote: »

It was 566 kHz in those days, from Athlone. VHF was on a few transmitters outside of Dublin as well. If you buy an old radio from back then it will cover only 88 to 100 or 104. Nothing on the air over 100 MHz in the UK or here back then.

http://www.frequencyfinder.org.uk/Radio_1966.pdf

I'm fascinated by the chart, where did you pull it up from? Can you get one from 1980/3 that era, before 1984 anyway, thanks.

There is one for 1966 1977 1984 and 1995. Substitute the year on that posting.

If you go to frequency finder home page all the links are there with a few more too.

nox001 wrote: »

To stop pirates punching on the frequency, the carrier will be left on for some time

I'm sure there's plenty of space on Band lll for anyone else to chance it, even the space which Mux2 operated on, and just how many more multiplexes can fit on Band lll.

rogue-entity wrote: »

I know there was a second trial service of some kind, only a few tens of Watts with equipment loaned from ViaDAB. Apparently some integration with an App on your phone but I don't remember the specifics; you could pick it up if you were in Donnybrook but that's about it.

That was later on, around 2017/18. That one I do remember well, pretty much all of the current local FM stations were on it. I was able to (just about) pick it up on the DART platforms at Connolly. Like you say, I think it was a test to integrate streaming with DAB reception and fail over to streaming when DAB was unavailable.

rogue-entity wrote: »

We can barely fill a two-mux system because the prices charged to potential broadcasters is eye-wateringly expensive and if you're already paying to broadcast on Astra2 I don't see the incentive to pay ridiculous prices to the transmission operator here. There is also absolutely no competition, since, noone else can obtain a DTV mux licence.

Were we not forced into digital switch-off I'd put it to you we'd still be quite happy with Analogue PAL broadcasting

We can thank TV3/Virgin Media for that farce unfortunately.

They switched TV to. Digital and not radio.
It is limiting potential choice.