DAB Thread

I don’t really think there’s much incentive to turn FM off - it’s cheap to run and the technology is still available.

It won’t be countries turning it off, other than ones that have very state dominated broadcasting like Norway, rather it will be commercial factors.

If the audiences dry up you could see ILRs begin to fail commercially. They have significant overheads and often quite big rural areas to cover.

When you look at how long AM transmissions stayed in air, mostly from PSBs, you can see that some FM services could well be on air in 2050 and beyond, but they’re unlikely to be commercial.

From a technical point of view, DAB offers zero real world enhancements to FM - sound quality is very often worse than FM - and whatever limited spectral savings are made are moot as the 88-108MHz band is of limited attraction for alternative use. Ironically - the spectrum DAB would take up would be of more use to other operators than the FM spectrum it would replace.

Sound quality is actually great if you use a decent bitrate codec for DAB, or some of the more recent DAB+ codecs work great on lower bit rates…. but as always, money wins.

I wouldn't say 88-108 MHz is of no real use. Europe has run out of frequencies for ATC. There was numerous pushes to try open up 136-143 MHz for ATC use (some countries and military do anyway), but there is far to much established services using it…. going the opposite way, I would see even 3 or 4 MHz being a VERY attractive prospect to European ATC.

Also, the propagation effects are very well understood and would be idea band for future land based aeronautical data systems. Some services are in use on the continent, but are contending with existing mobile phone spectrum… 88-108 would be ideal for this use.

Was harmonised at WRC 2015…only currently implemented in Europe and parts of Asia

https://www.telecoms.com/regulation/itu-globally-allocates-700-mhz-band-to-mobile

Who said they had to be broadband? considering 20Mhz of spectrum was going for millions for mobile. There are numerous ATC applications crying out for bandwidth that VHF-DL cannot satisfy currently, so move to expensive sat services.

The viability of a DAB rollout depends on convincing the public that this is something they need, but if there's no real selling point for the consumer - either in comparison to internet or FM - why is anyone going to go out and buy a DAB radio? There is no compelling case to do so

That should be the case, but wasn't for Ireland. Why not provide a compelling case? Rather than doing half arsed "trials" for years on end?

In Europe and the UK radios are still being bought en-masse.. you can pick up a half decent, loud, DAB/AM/FM radio for 10 or 20 euro easy enough…

Anyway, I still think it will be a case of the government having to move to a digital medium, rather than want to.

Most likely as TV licence money declines, and they don't address RTE salaries, first thing that gets looked at is "how can we provide this service for cheaper?".

The FM kit needs to be maintained/replaced…. someone is going to look at that and think "hmmm, for an initial CAPEX, I can reduce my overall OPEX and run multiple stations for cheaper"… that will be the end for AM/FM in Ireland.

What that digital solution is, remains to be seen. There are Government policies to be able to provide Broadcast comms in emergency situations, which cellular solutions are not very robust against, so you come back to an FM / DAB broadcast infrastructure type model.

It's all well and good broadcasting updates over 5G, when the base stations in the area are out of action

Why not provide a compelling case?

What could the compelling case be?

Let's imagine a scenario in which all the RTE and commercial services are available nationwide on DAB tomorrow, and they're supplemented by a few playlisted music services and some talk radio stations from abroad - this is the absolute best case content-wise.

And imagine you're a guy working in DID Electrical.

Now, convince me, as a consumer of content and a purchaser of electronic devices, why I need to buy a DAB radio when I can get every single one of these stations through my phone, Alexa and CarPlay.

Convince you? You've made it plainly clear there is no convincing you.

You might be happy with setting up all those streaming services, paying your subscription, using your phone all the time as a radio etc…

However, you personally don't speak for everyone. Some people don't like doing that. There is still a huge market share of people who want to buy a 20 or 30 eur radio and off they go to listen to live radio. What makes it compelling is variety and choice.

There are numerous studies from around Europe which anticipates DAB to be at least 35-40% of the market share by 2035, where AM/FM is anticipated to be less than 10% (mainly due to cost). Which makes it still commercially viable well into next decade.

The voluntary offering of DAB in Ireland has sailed though IMO… RTE's "choice offering" was poor, along with limited coverage for trials…. how can you offer to the masses, when you actually don't offer to the masses? Independent offerings were stifled from the get go to even think of becoming commercially viable.

As I said, it will be a case of some sort of digital offering having to be introduced, rather than wanting to.

Convince you? You've made it plainly clear there is no convincing you

Again with the personal antagonism. You don't need to convince me, I already have two DAB radios. I was very clearly referring to a hypothetical customer walking in the door of a shop and you were completely unable to come up with a pitch.

You might be happy with setting up all those streaming services, paying your subscription, using your phone all the time as a radio etc…

I don't really use my phone as a radio. I listen to FM a lot, I have an internet radio in my kitchen, and my phone is usually used for Spotify. But what subscription am I paying? TuneIn and the alternatives are all free, and one service gives you pretty much every radio station on the planet, so "all those streaming services" is not accurate, it's one app.

There is still a huge market share of people who want to buy a 20 or 30 eur radio and off they go to listen to live radio. What makes it compelling is variety and choice.

Variety and choice is exactly the problem. Best case, you're offering me maybe twenty or thirty stations via DAB when I have 10,000 via the Internet. There's no contest. My 75 year old father loves his Alexa because it's so easy, he just shouts at it to play Newstalk and off he goes, and the proportion of people comfortable with smart tech is only going up.

I agree that eventually, the EU will probably mandate analogue shutdown but we're at least 10 if not 20 years away from that.

revenue streams stretched far too thin.

I totally agree - Ireland can barely support the stations we have, so where is the revenue going to come from to make all these new DAB offerings profitable?

So if I want to listen to BBC or Heart UK, straight away that's 2 new sign ups.

As of today, BBC radio is coming through loud and clear on TuneIn. I don't listen to Heart UK but I would imagine there are 500 similar stations I could listen to instead. And the suggestion that adding another app to my phone is some major ordeal is a bit odd, most people have dozens already.

But since DAB can't provide these stations either, how is it better? That's what I'm asking, how do you sell DAB to the average consumer?

ou also pay an internet subscription to access these services and need to be able to access said network, which in this day and age, can still be a potential issue.

This is a red herring. The number of people who don't have internet in 2024 is pretty small and only going to get smaller. And the people who don't are absolutely not the ones who will go out and adopt DAB. So who's your target market? Probably the less than 1% who used DAB during its trials.

And that is where it all falls apart. You're talking huge amounts of public money to provide a service that a tiny, tiny number of people actively want. It's just not a good idea and until we are mandated to switch off FM, it's unlikely to happen.

Broadcasts advantage now is in dense areas, not rural really.

Slightly poorer than average car radio (Pioneer, surprisingly) can't hold on to any stations in the middle of Donegal, but I've enough data to play a FLAC album on Plexamp.

By comparison, I can get ~15 radio stations on my phones FM radio inside my office but two of the three mobile networks only have 2G!

I can’t see a DAB network ever launching in Ireland, it simply doesn’t make any sense at this point. It hasn’t made sense for at least 10 years.

As mentioned by others, there is no real advantage for listeners - so nobody is too bothered. FM works, for anything else they can just use streaming.

Next, a lot of people have no access to a DAB radio outside of modern cars. FM radios last for years - they are basic electronics that just keep going. If they do break, most likely replacement is an Alexa/Google Home - not a new FM radio.

Young people really, really don’t care - if it’s not on TikTok, it doesn’t exist in their eyes. Audience for radio broadcasts is getting smaller and smaller.

Even if there was some mandate from outside the state to shutdown FM, I still can’t see that happening within 5 years. By that point DAB will probably be on the chopping block itself.

The main issue is broadcasters / content trying to cut out the middleman. You’re seeing a lot of that in TV streaming too.

I assume BBC plans to be able to insert preroll ads outside the UK.

It's possible that the RTE might bring DAB+ up again, at some point. Reason being is that the RTE is in financial difficulty, and if they were ever to introduce a household charge ( irrespective if one owns a TV or radio or not ) they would have to bring a bit more to the table than 4 radio stations and two or three TV channels.

Operational cost of DAB+ is rather cheap, compared to everything else.

The choice of variety on DAB+ in the UK is amazing. Once you're used to it you'll find that in the Republic of Ireland FM radio is stuck somewhere in 2008 or 2010. In the ROI commercial radio is operating under the idea that every licensed FM station has it's own protected patch, region and territory and DAB+ would be a threat. In reality the end consumer and listener is looking elsewhere like in the internet / smartphone etc…

I am surprised that you picked up Caroline or Eirewave etc… as they have the weakest signal in Newry. I presume you had a specific antenna?

BBC can probably be picked up with more ease on the Three Rock either from NI or from Wales.

I bought a Sony sound system a few years ago - the internet radio service was discontinued a couple of years later.

I also bought a Roberts internet radio - it can't play the BBC radio stations anymore since they dropped the Shoutcast service.

I also bought a Marantz sound sytem - now I can't access internet radio on it without subscribing to VTuner.

Internet radio is great, until it isn't. You're at the mercy of providers and having a broadband connection. There's still so much to be said for broadcast radio, both on FM and hopefully in the future a DAB+ service.

I noticed when listening to BBC on Alexa and Google home devices that it now plays through BBC sounds but their radio channels are still available on TuneIn on my car and phone