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Shared Ireland - FailteDAB and NI DAB

jmb2022

With DAB+ finally seeing a launch in Ireland is there a Shared Ireland opportunity to deliver reciprocal choice across the island of Ireland? Think BBC Ulster and other BBC stations, Virgin etc, available across Ireland. And do the same for RTE, Newstalk etc across NI. Huge opportunity to bridge across communities.

Also would love to see more enlightened choices including but not limited to NPR from the US, CBC from Canada….

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lertsnim

While that would be nice this is only a trial and limited to mostly Leinster.

Murph_D

Would be nice, and surely no issues from a tech point of view. However programming rights, copyright, territorial licensing issues between Ireland/EU and UK come into play and would likely result in plenty of programming having to be blacked out.

icdg

Not really on radio no, Radio 5 (and in commercial land TalkSport) are the main UK stations that do have rights issues, with there being black outs on certain feeds of R5 of sporting content. Most of the other stations have, at least up to now, been happily available internationally through BBC Sounds and other apps.

It won’t happen though for other reasons - not least that the Irish radio industry hostility to DAB has gone nowhere. The ILR’s don’t like the idea of “multiplexes”. Simple as. They want local exclusivity on being local. This is totally different to the UK where local radio outside the BBC is dying an initially slow but now speeding up death and the former local stations are now essentially national networks.

You’ll see on another thread that the BBC is planning on removing certain forms of access to most BBC radio stations other than World Service and Radio 4 for international listeners- though it appears to have been since clarified that this will only (for the moment) affect its first party BBC Sounds app and not third party apps such as TuneIn.

watty

DAB favours national stations and the final 5% coverage is expensive. It was a mistake. Adding more FM Radio spectrum at 68MHz to 88MHz would have made more sense over 15 years ago. it's no use for anything else other than mobile two way radio and many FM radio chips can do it.
Also DAB+ isn't used for better quality but to reduce costs, more stations per multiplex.

DAB isn't back. This is just a trial.

Actually many people I know in NI have gone back to VHF-FM for the car from DAB and use FM or streaming at home.

Also the previous DAB service simply duplicated DVB-T, which oddly can use less power! A DVB-T stick works on my phone or tablet. There are phones and tablets with FM built in, though none without 3.5mm jacks.

I bought several DAB radios and the UI and power consumption was ghastly.

Maxamillionimums

This nonsense always came up during past dab tests 15/20 years ago too, halfwits expecting it to be carrying the BBC. It ain't happening. Get over it.

jmb2022

Not limiting the imagination to the BBC is key here. France as an example has francophone input from a variety of french speaking countries on their DAB+ rollout - Belgium, Luxemburg, Morroco to name but a few.

watty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123238926#Comment_123238926

Who pays for it? Who decided it? Is there real local radio (more local than regional). Note that France also has the main French services delivered at vast expense to South American and other French territories.
Ireland, despite diaspora has never had any real overseas service and in the heyday of Shortwave, never had a service (there was a test in about 1948). Also English Language do we really want anything other than BBC or Local BBC (Ulster, Foyle, Scotland etc), or N.I.s Downtown Radio (competition to local radio). Surely we don't want US Stations on DAB? Or China.

Also while mass market audio is best as Broadcast Radio, niche content is best as internet streaming and unlike video isn't a huge amount of traffic. The very local nature of Irish Local radio is unsuited to DAB and a National DAB would only benefit RTE. It would simply duplicate RTE on DVB-T and DVB-S and most of RTE's listeners listen on FM.

DAB and DAB+ are poor solutions looking for a problem. Almost all exclusive deployments are political in nature to suit incumbent National broadcasters.

jmb2022

English services of note - NPR, CBC, SBS from the US, Canada and Australia are excellent choices.

And local DAB muxes are already available, spurring a new low cost path to local radio - an arguably inspired policy from Ofcomm: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/digital-radio/turn-up-and-tune-into-small-scale-dab/

And already evidence of new options in the local Newry MUX.

timothydec77

I can't understand why test something that is unlikely to become reality in Ireland.

Other than research purposes for other markets.

watty

Sometimes it's to look good to get general investment.
I know companies that have done R&D or trials without any intention of commercial reality to boost their image to potential investors.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123250416#Comment_123250416

Keep your options open. Net neutrality is going to become an inevitable issue in the next few years. I expect the likes of Bauer and Wireless see that as a risk and are most likely behind this renewed interest in testing.

Fixed line operators have spent billions rolling out fibre while mobile operators have spent billions on buying spectrum for 4G and 5G networks. They're not seeing the returns they wanted (or expected) from consumers and are not going to be happy with content providers effectively getting to deliver streamed premium content over their networks for free. In a market of shrinking revenue, the feeling that the content providers "should" pay for carriage is inevitably going to turn into "must" pay…

timothydec77

I understand the concept of net neutrality. It's largely in regards to video.

The providers hoped for tripple play. Phone, tv and Internet.

I know in USA they slow dow the speeds of streaming sites they don't like.

jmb2022

Screenshot 2025-03-11 at 11.09.01.jpeg.png

Lame response from RTE…. But not giving up!

watty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123254711#Comment_123254711

What else do you expect? They wasted millions on DAB before.

decor58

Dab radio was supposedly the next generation 20 years ago. The company behind this trial is called Foothold Communications, a company with interests in transmission towers, some commercial operators have expressed an interest, strange because commercial operators were not interested in the previous trial.

jmb2022

Some folks behind FailteDAB were thoughtful enough to shed more light on the launch, and the zero likelihood of seeing any foreign services on the initial run of the MUX.

watty

And who would pay for it?

This trial is a PR scheme.

jmb2022

PR scheme? To what end?

watty

Usually either for raising direct investment, share issue or selling off the business. Companies often do R&D or trials of stuff they in reality have no intention of commercialising, for various reasons. Sometimes ego.

See also "concept cars".

mrwish

I can't post in the thread in the radio forum because I don't meet the restrictions, but with the bit of tropo enhancement we have at the moment the Fáilte DAB tests on 7C are making it here to the West of England (Gloucestershire) today.

jmb2022

Super cool - thank you for posting!

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058399408/shared-ireland-failtedab-and-ni-dab

In general I would agree with you strongly, but I'd also say, you're dreaming.

First it's still a DAB+ trial in Ireland, and 2nd, there is still a lot of resistance to change towards DAB+. ( This ship has sailed and now it's too late is even rampant in this forum on the subject DAB+)

It would be nice to get BBC Radio in the Republic and RTE in the North, but it's more the stuff dreams are made off. These are often answered by a "Why should they offer that?"

I would suggest it's possibly more likely for Virgin Radio to have something like a Virgin Ireland Radio for the market in the Republic? But as said, it's possible, but not certain.

jmb2022

Some early indications of what context we can expect: Nova is now detailing Nova Xtra: https://www.nova.ie/nova-xtra-on-dab-radio/

Charles Slane

And…. https://radiotoday.ie/2025/03/wireless-ireland-and-urbanmedia-rebrand-to-onic-and-launch-10-new-radio-services/

Aidan McCarthy

It will also be good too if RTE DAB Radio is back up and running for another trial run for 12 months along with DAB+ radio

Aidan McCarthy

I and none of anyone will see virgin ireland Radio here. We have plenty of Radio stations on air just the same thing with television stations here on ireland

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123319352#Comment_123319352

I don't think RTE will be involved in this at all. Bauer, Onic (Wireless Ireland) and Kevin Branigan's group of stations are the main backers, but I have it on good authority that there will be some smaller players too.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123302673#Comment_123302673

"There’ll also be an expansion of talkSPORT Ireland".

An interesting tidbit of info from that article. Talksport already does an optout show for it's RoI listeners, presented by Trevor Welch. Starts at mid-day on a Saturday and has three Premier League commentaries (12.30, 3pm and 5.30).

jmb2022

Now showing ~ 20 stations live - I think likely a few stations still to join….

decor58

Some of the Onic stations are running a loop of about 10 tracks repeatedly, it will be interesting to see what evolves. I presume these channels will have to be licensed.