FáilteDAB: Coverage, Tests and Services

that would be disappointing

Are the 'general public' even aware it exists?

No company is going to sink effort and a large amount of money into a short trial. This is here to stay - I expect trial will be extended then a permanent licence awarded.

From just general observation and talking to people, I suspect that many are not. I know someone who has DAB on their car radio, but they never use it. They will put on either Spin1038 or FM104 or play their own music from their phone through the car radio. Outside of the radio industry and radio anoraks, who actually knows about these tests? It would be interesting to conduct a survey. I think it needs to be publicised more through various media. I should mention that 8Radio regularly give it a plug so their listeners know about it anyway!

Certain niche genres are covered (country, alternative rock, classic rock, soul, r 'n' b) but there are a few missing, with dance being one of the more obvious ones. You could also include jazz, funk and classical. There are a few ways of looking at the simulcasts, but on balance it probably does not make sense to take up space with stations already widely available. There are more than one oldies oriented stations which does seem like a bit of overkill, unless they are catering for different segments of the market. The thing is that in the case of the oldies there are different providers involved. It is ironic that RTE are not involved this time and with the previous DAB trials they had various digital stations at the time (now all online), such as RTE Gold (oldies), 2XM (alternative) and RTE Pulse (dance).

Looking at the bitrates of each service, below is the capacity breakdown of the current 26 offerings by station genre:

"Genre specific music" - 38% (10 services)
"Era specific music" - 31% (8 services)
"Relay of existing FM station" - 23% (5 services)
"Religious" - 4% (2 services)
"Irish language" - 4% (1 service)

My guess is the presence of the FM relays is to prove the feasibility of the DAB service as an FM replacement. My car, for example, doesn't even list the FM services that are duplicated on DAB. It gives priority to DAB. In day-to-day driving around, this has caused no noticeable issues for me.

Still a shame there is no dedicated dance/electronic service. There's an over supply of 80s/oldies services in my opinion.

@JDxtra That's an interesting one about the car radio, just checked mine and it's the same (going by Newstalk anyway) There's no FM/DAB separate bands it just shows a list of what it's receiving.

Unfortunately if I move the car about 5 metres DAB will disappear😁 mobile is not possible at my location in N Tipp but even a little poxy tin box Pure Mi can pick them up in the house.

Alas that has been the history of DAB radio in Ireland to date.

Unless there has been a significant change in the thinking on the future of broadcasting in Ireland ,this test will come to an end next March.

Too many parties want the status quo to remain.

Regarding the lack of eg Jazz service , all stations were required to gain a CnaM licence .

On a more positive note, Greatest Hits Radio has now officially been added to the Bauer portfolio of stations , more presenters are to be added in addition to Liam Quigley and Debbie Allen.

With 8Radio FM run shortly , there should be a lot of plugging of their DAB+ option

Nobody put a fraction of the effort in to previous trials that Bauer and Onic have for this one.

Total didn't get any commercial broadcasters of scale onboard; or try in a real population centre.

Realistically, it was doomed to failure from day one due to both of those.

RTE abandoned it. This is a further (third or fourth, arguably) commercial trial, but this time it actually has the main commercial broadcasters interested.

The prior commercial trials had at best disinterest and re-broadcasts of existing FM services from them.

Also, ONIC sounds like the noise a pig makes… Onic kids 😶

Notably previous efforts by RTE and the commercial broadcasters only had about 10-12 stations per mux, having over 20 to offer presumably reduces the price every radio station pays

Just a thought, but if RTE fired up their multiplex on 12C, would they be able offer slots to other commercial broadcasters?

If it was DAB+ with maybe RTE Radio 1, 2, Lyric, RnaG, RTE Gold, and maybe one or two others, they could offer maybe 15 other slots for other stations.

RTÉ rely on advertising

They’re not about to flood the market with cheap alternatives

They didn’t when they had DAB and they won’t now