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Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio
- wyldfire 10y agoOn one hand, spectrum is a precious resource and no one would ever forfeit it without a mandate. OTOH don't you just love the simplicity of the FM radio? I can say that I've never found one that doesn't work. Sometimes I don't want to troubleshoot, I just want to listen to the radio on my way to work. ;) > 'We are simply not ready for this yet' Well, Norway, maybe if you were a big exporter or even importer of automobiles, your legislation would light a fire under some major manufacturers. But you're just not big enough of a consumer.
- userbinator 10y agoYet FM still can't beat AM for simplicity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio
- greglindahl 10y agoDon't worry, there's a new digital standard for AM radio too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio#AM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio#AM
- Matthias247 10y agoIsn't HD Radio a proprietary thing and not a real standard that anybody can use?
- scholia 10y agoThe new digital standard for radio is DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale). Given a choice, nobody would adopt 1990s-style DAB today. Problem is that countries are so deep in failing DAB systems that they don't have the will or the guts to change. It would involve a lot of humility and a huge loss of face. Sobering thought for the day: DAB was developed at the same time as the World-Wide Web.
- Johnythree 10y agoDRM is an international standard. So of course in the USA they have their own propriety standard. "In-band on-channel" or IBOC. Different versions for the AM band and the FM band.
- jjoonathan 10y agoIt's even easier to demodulate at high power :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSuInSkHtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSuInSkHtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82s5Q3GIO9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82s5Q3GIO9I
- acchow 10y agoI have no idea how this works.
- dest 10y agolooks like a plasma speaker
- digi_owl 10y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snibt3CNqBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snibt3CNqBA Effectively AM recreates a sound wave using the EM spectrum in the most direct way possible. When the clamp is held just right, an arc forms between it and the mast that recreates the AM signal with enough energy to vibrate the nearby air.
- barsonme 10y agoRemind me to never climb an AM radio tower...
- voltagex_ 10y agoDAB+ sounds terrible to me compared to a (tuned) FM station - AFAICT it's 48kbit AAC.
- l1ambda 10y agoI believe it. That's not nearly enough bits.
- Bamberg 10y agoIt seems that to achieve the same perceived quality as FM you need about 160kbit/s (when using DAB). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting
- tormeh 10y agoIf you live next to the radio tower, perhaps. I prefer to have more sound in my noise than FM can offer.
- scholia 10y agoWhat sort of aerial are you using?
- scholia 10y agoI ask because FM waves are 2.8 to 3.4 metres long, so a quarter-wave FM aerial should be 70-86cm (28-33 inches) long....
- tormeh 10y agoNo idea. Car radios etc. They work amazingly well in Oslo, but they're useless out in the bushes. Radio isn't fun when you only hear half the conversation. Give me error correction and lossy codecs any time.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoOver 60% against ... but "more channels". OK solely money driven then. I have somewhere around 12 FM radios, ranging in price from £10 to £lots and 40 years old or newer. They all still work and often give LW and SW too. In the UK at least DAB is mp2 and an excuse to put out thousands of channels at horrible bit rates. Like down to 64k streams. OK for a noisy car, terrble for at home or headphones. They all work and put out sound in sync (nb except the new denon micro system that for some reason must be using digital stage in processing fm meaning the sound comes .5s later). I often leave the radio on in several rooms when moving around, so this is especially annoying. They degrade in poor signal "nicer" than DAB and remain listenable longer. FM has infinitely better coverage across the country. For the battery powered ones they're at least an order or two of magnitude better battery life. DAB is horrific for portables.
- voltagex_ 10y agoBlah, DAB is MP2 vs AAC for DAB+. I guess that's one advantage of Australia lagging so far behind the rest of the world in radio+TV - I'm pretty sure we went straight to DAB+.
- keeperofdakeys 10y agoExcept that for some reason Australia picked MPEG-2 for our digital TV, and so HD was almost unwatchable. Though it seems we've moved to MPEG-4 now.
- voltagex_ 10y agoIt wouldn't surprise me if we went to MPEG2 because the original subsidised set top boxes were cheaper than the ones that supported H.264. There's some documents available under FOI (posted online) that have some further info on H.264 in digital broadcasts in Australia. Frustratingly, my TV isn't compatible, but a much older set top box (purchased to avoid silly DRM) works fine.
- mycall 10y agoConsider getting an RTL-SDR for your 13th FM radio.
- lightedman 10y agoFor more channels? I would've thought a country like Norway would use that bandwidth to make some sort of high-power long-range public-access network.
- frozenport 10y agoThe NPR One radio app costs me an extra $20 dollars a month due to high data usage. And NPR gets none of that cash. If my phone had user facing FM tuning I could probably contribute directly to content creators. I wonder if shutting down FM and replacing it with much more expensive mobile data is a conspiracy by cellular carriers?
- rtpg 10y agoAre you sure your phone doesn't have an FM radio? A lot of phones have it built-in (just need to have headphones plugged in for the antenna), but don't advertise it much.
- frozenport 10y agoBut without a custom rom it isn't exposed. This is part of the conspiracy by my mobile carrier to make me buy their hella expensive data plan.
- khedoros1 10y agoThe radio in mine is (in an HTC One A9). I almost never have headphones with me though, so it's not usually of any practical use to me.
- jtl999 10y agoPeople don't even reverse engineer baseband/FM radio chips in phones under the mentality that "it cannot be done." and other stigmas such as NDA's. Sickens me to no end.
- EamonnMR 10y agoThat's the one thing I miss on my old Xiaomi - it came with a ROM that enabled FM and even had a nice app for it.
- ac29 10y ago>The NPR One radio app costs me an extra $20 dollars a month due to high data usage. And NPR gets none of that cash. Subscribe to the NPR shows you like via a podcasting app (which will pre-download via wifi), and donate the $20/month to NPR.
- riffic 10y agoThis seems like a severely premature move.
- wonko1 10y agoI hope AM doesn't end up going the same way too. It would be sad if it wasn't possible to throw a radio together using a few discrete components.
- skrause 10y agoIn Germany AM is already completely dead, the last station shut down about a year ago.
- douche 10y agoAs a US citizen, I cannot imagine a world without FM radio. It's almost the only option for in-vehicle audio. I've heard of such a thing as AM radio, but outside of billboards stating that accident information on interstate highways is available via that frequency, I have no connection to it. I've heard pray-tell that NPR broadcasts on such frequencies as well, but I can neither confirm nor deny that. I suspect that Clearchannel and the other one that have effectively bought up monopoly rights to the FM spectrum would fight this tooth and nail.
- an_account 10y agoAM is a great place to listen to NPR, and tons of talk shows + sports are on AM. And FM being the only option for in car audio? That's crazy. There's cell data and predownloaded music, podcast and audiobooks. Though I agree that tons of people would fight this change in America.
- hackuser 10y ago> It's almost the only option for in-vehicle audio Also, satellite radio is common.
- brian-armstrong 10y agoIf you're going to take FM radio and slice into a bunch of digital channels, it'd be interesting to make one or two citizens' bands. I know CB is kind of a mess but I like the idea that the music radio in your car could receive and perhaps even transmit on the local band.
- timonoko 10y agoFM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing. The cell-phone digital network is much more advanced, the antennas are on mountain tops and there is always coverage within few hundred meters.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fpoling 10y agoAdd to that tunnels. In western Norway one drives up to 10% of time in tunnels and only very few channels and only in longer tunnels have coverage. Mobile networks work reliably most of the time.
- gravypod 10y agoWhat is a fjord?
- snom380 10y agohttps://www.google.no/search?q=fjord&tbm=isch https://www.google.no/search?q=fjord&tbm=isch
- dx034 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord
- whiskers 10y agoIt's a steep-sided inlet. They're award winning you know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord
- gravypod 10y agoSo "steep-sided inlet" as in "mountian going into a lake".
- ptaipale 10y agoWhat do we do with more channels that we can't listen? If you really need a little bit of bandwidth around 100 MHz for other use, you could cut the spectrum from FM radio and still keep it running. The place where I usually listen to radio is the car. Car radios don't have DAB receivers. They all have FM receivers. And these days most cars have radio units that are integrated to the car electronics, steering wheel controls etc - so it's not that easy to just get a new radio that fits the hole. If I get rid of FM radio, I will not replace it with DAB. I'll listen to some streaming service over IP.
- martinald 10y agoMost newish cars in the UK come with DAB as standard now.
- ptaipale 10y agoAround here (Finland, neighbouring Norway), the average car on the road is 12 years old, so if we start to get DAB radios now, almost half of them will have it by 2025. Many more cars have right now Bluetooth connectivity in the audio system, so it'll be streaming from the phone then.
- jdietrich 10y agoAn aftermarket head unit with DAB+ costs about €150 with installation. Owners of older cars aren't stuck, but they will have to pay for the privilege of continuing to receive radio broadcasts.
- ptaipale 10y agoWill that integrate into the car electronics, and be able to run e.g. the satnav UI if that is included in the previous one?
- jessaustin 10y agoThis is just another example of satnav being a terrible option to build into cars. Who wants to use a "custom" nav system kludged together by the lowest bidder ten years ago when we have much better on our phones?
- snom380 10y agoThere's a huge marketing / awareness campaign going on right now in Norway to get people to upgrade their FM radios. I wonder if the radio stations will realize too late that they're throwing away their one advantage (ubiquity) and maybe the option some people will choose when the car radio stops working is to not listen to radio at all.
- dagss 10y agoMany will definitely just switch their habit to Spotify instead, will be interesting to see the numbers...
- a1studmuffin 10y agoDon't most smartphones have emergency broadcasts built-in these days? Who doesn't have their phone on them when they're driving in a car?
- kagamine 10y agoThe obvious flaws in that argument are battery life for one, and that whenever any major event happens, like New Years Eve, the mobile network slows to a halt. In a national emergency, a smartphone isn't going to last long enough to serve you, especially in a climate where winter temperatures are routinely as low as -25 centigrade and battery life is all the worse for it.
- sseppola 10y agoWord! Norwegian living in Oslo here, my iPhone 6 can shut down around 40-50% battery around -5 centigrade if I keep it out for long enough that it cools down (5 mins should do it). Now I always try to keep it warm in my hands and stick it back in my pocket asap, and I always keep it the pocket on my thigh, if I keep it in a pocket without close body contact it cools down as if it was outside.. I've heard something about this being caused by the aluminium covering the back of the phone and it accelerating the transfer of heat. Can't confirm it though, my last phone was an iPhone 4 which was equally terrible in the same environment.
- ereyes01 10y agoQuestion I have is how resilient is the cell network in the event of a large-scale power outage? Can the antennae towers still operate without the power grid?
- jpindar 10y agoThey have batteries, but I don't think they last very long.
- trprog 10y agoAnyone who doesn't own a mobile/cell phone?
- mongol 10y agoSweden narrowly avoided this, there was a very strong drive, but in the end the responsibie minister halted it. One of the few pieces of happy news in later years.
- bearcobra 10y agoI visited my hometown over the holidays, and the first thing I did after getting into the rental car was tune into the local Alt Rock FM station. The playlists (and most of the DJs) haven't change in the 10 years since high school. I kinda loved it.
- BurningFrog 10y agoMy local alt-rock station has also turned itself into a golden oldies station without changing anything.
- gumby 10y agoI like that the UK will switch over once usage reaches 50% -- abandoning a huge number of listeners! They should abandon it when it becomes vestigial -- say more than L5K/listener/year or something like that. Clearly money or techno-determinism is at play.
- paublyrne 10y agoI believe they said they will look again at the issue once usage exceeds 50%. Which would probably mean a decision to switch including a multiyear runway.
- scholia 10y agoYes. Unfortunately the numbers are based on cheating the public. The 50% isn't 50% of people using DAB, it's 50% of listening to digital sources in total, including DAB. This could allow them to switch off FM even if more people listen to FM than DAB radio, depending on the growth of other forms of digital listening.
- th0ma5 10y agoIt is a real shame that the US went with the proprietary HD Radio scheme. The devices are so expensive and there hardly are any available. Just now I couldn't even find anything less than $100. What a scam. I feel sorry for all the radio stations that wasted money on this. Would DAB be able to gain ground in the US?
- nicky0 10y agoBe careful what you wish for, DAB is pretty horrible too.
- Angostura 10y agoIn what respect? I have DAB at home and in the car in the UK and find it reliable and decent quality.
- scholia 10y agoDAB sound quality can be as good as you like, but as implemented, it's generally very low. (Stations use low bit-rates to reduce costs.) On average, in fact, DAB sound quality is much lower than FM, assuming you're in a good signal area and/or have a decent FM aerial. You also need a lot more expensive masts to provide DAB coverage. In many places where you get poor FM reception, you get "bubbling mud" or no DAB reception at all.
- skrause 10y agoYou must be from the UK. The "bubbling mud" is a property of the old DAB which also uses MP2 for the audio (an 80s technology codec). Here in Germany it's all DAB+ which has better error correction with a more robust signal (and no bubbling). Radio stations in Germany also tend to use 96-128 kbit AAC/HE-AAC which sounds way better than FM radio.
- scholia 10y agoYes, I've already mentioned that. See some of my other comments, including: "Some countries have stations at 48kbps. The UK is leading the drive to lower sound quality with DAB+ stations on the SDL multiplex at 32kbps." > Radio stations in Germany also tend to use 96-128 kbit AAC/HE-AAC which sounds way better than FM radio. Lucky you. Most UK stations are on 80kbps with MP2, and we have music stations broadcasting at 64kbps in mono. The BBC often manages 112-128kbps but only ONE station does better than that: BBC classical music station Radio 3 is at 160-192kbps. No DAB+ station broadcasts at more than 32kbps. In other words, there isn't a single UK radio station that reaches FM quality. None of them sounds way better. If you want to feel my pain, see http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/uknat.html http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/uknat.html Look at London 3, which I get at home, and weep....
- kriro 10y agoI wonder how smooth the switch will be (the article says cars are a big problem due to the price). I'd imagine quite a few people won't upgrade their car radio and you'd think...so what radio is way to retro let's just stream stuff and listen to mp3s/ogg. I don't know if owning a radio is legally required in Norway but if it isn't I can see the radio ownership going down. Once again you may ask so what? The biggest issue (for me) is that radio plays an essential part in crisis management. Imagine a long term power outage or some other crisis. With radios it's mostly a matter of keeping stations running and making sure the population knows that a battery powered (or crank powered) radio such as a car radio will work during a power outage. That's one of the few reliable ways of mass-communicating important information during power outages.
- dagss 10y agoIt would be cheaper to develop a system for mass-SMS in a crisis and publicize it than to keep FM/DAB running, and I bet the delivery rate of the crisis message would be an order of magnitude higher.
- kieranelby 10y agoNot if the crisis involves mains power outage - cell towers don't generally have backup power so mobile phones will be useless. Edit: Adding generators/batteries to a significant fraction of cell towers is (probably) impractical due to them being bulky, expensive, and attractive to thieves.
- lb1lf 10y agoThis is not correct in the case of Norway, at least - I believe (mind, believe, I do not know for sure) that telcos are mandated by law to have emergency power supplies available; whenever we have a massive power outage, cell service stays up for hours, if not days afterwards. Them being bulky is a major deterrent to theft, as a lot of our cellphone infrastructure is way out in the boonies and not really accessible unless you REALLY want to get to it...
- oli5679 10y agoIt's interesting to note how valuable spectrum is for mobile internet use. Think about the bandwidth taken up by FM radio broadcasting next time your in a city with your phone struggling with sluggish connection.
- dagss 10y agoConsensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead). The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose it, now that they know it is too late to do something about it...
- audunw 10y agoI doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it. But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you support? There are none. You have to have apps. Do you think your car will still get software updates for those in 10 years? I also think we tech geeks overestimate the popularity of streaming in cars. Hell, I'm a geek but even I actually prefer radio when driving.
- Nullabillity 10y ago> But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you support? There are none. You have to have apps. Do you think your car will still get software updates for those in 10 years? None. You add a plain 3.5mm line-in plug.
- freehunter 10y agoOr better yet, a 3.5mm plug, USB, and Bluetooth. No matter what happens with the 3.5mm plug, USB and Bluetooth aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Might as well toss them all in to make sure it's actually future-proofed.
- kuschku 10y ago
- msh 10y agoI know I am properly a outlier but how many people on HN actually listens to radio over FM/DAB/Other non IP systems? I dont remember when I last listened to radio. Even in the car the entertainment is one or more of the following from the connected phone: - Streaming or locally stored music - Podcasts (which may include shows produced by radio stations). - Audiobooks. At home its the same, either played directly on the playback device (sonos) or from the phone. I really dont see the allure of flow radio, I hate listening to something I have no control over and if there are commercials its even worse. For my sake they could shutdown all radio broadcasts and use the bandwidth for mobile broadband. (Ok, maybe keep a single station running for emergency broadcasts).
- el_benhameen 10y agoI listen to pretty much only broadcast NPR when driving. It still has better ease of use than anything else. Nothing to set up or plug in to delay my departure (just press the power button and it's on), I don't have to choose an episode, the content is generally interesting, and there are no obtrusive ads. I have a short commute so I don't run into the problem of hearing repeat newscasts. If I spent more time in the car I might bring my own media (and I do when I go on road trips), but I quite like it for the 30-45 minutes a day that I'm in the car.
- niftich 10y agoYou're gonna get self-selecting responses to this, but I listen to FM a good amount -- maybe not every day, but several times a week, mostly in the car. For me, it's a way to attune to mainstream music or a particular station format and briefly escape my otherwise carefully curated playlists, and available at no cost to me, unlike some smartphone streaming service. In truth, to me the method of delivery is not relevant: it could be IP or OTA Digital or Analog. Rather, I sometimes enjoy the unattended, externally curated format of radio, vs. having to select the next playing item myself.
- adiabatty 10y agoI listen to the local NPR music station. My car seems like it's one year too old to have some sort of expandable input, and there's no sensible way to install a Lightning cable or Bluetooth adaptor into it since the stereo system is super-integrated. Of course, once I do get a car that has a Lightning hookup…I'll probably just listen to podcasts at every possible opportunity. Right now I usually only turn the radio on if I'm going to be in the car for 30 minutes or more, which happens maybe once a month at most.
- vassy 10y agoDAB radio in my car stopped working and it costs £650 to fix. The service guys said they have to replace the whole centre console. As I won't pay that much, it's FM radio or Bluetooth for me.
- notimetorelax 10y agoTo play devil's advocate, FM radio broke in my car with a similar price to fix it. What you describe is not unique to DAB radio.
- gambiting 10y agoTo be fair, that's usually the only solution official dealerships know. When the CD drive stopped working in my LR Discovery 3, the garage quoted me almost £1000 for replacing the whole unit. I took it to an electronics repair shop, who took it apart, replaced something inside, and ended up charging me £100 for the whole repair.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gravypod 10y agoWell congrats to the hams in this country. They're going to get a huge bandwidth that others would be envious enough. They could also explain to people that just switching modes isn't going to make reception better. If you're having propagation issues then you'd be much better off working on getting repeaters setup on high mountains.
- dtech 10y agoWon't the spectrum be used/sold for other purposes? Otherwise stopping FM isn't much use.
- audunw 10y ago> Otherwise stopping FM isn't much use. I think the main motivation to shut down FM is that now that DAB is built-out sufficiently (or so they say), running both at the same time is expensive. FM transmitters are supposedly quite power hungry and expensive to operate. It will take at least a decade or two to free up the FM band for other uses anyway. Norway will probably wait and use it in a way that aligns with the rest of the world, rather than finding its own local use for the spectrum.
- lb1lf 10y agoCorrect; FM is very power inefficient, particularly in Norway where one needs quite literally thousands of repeaters to provide coverage to every nook and cranny where someone saw fit to settle down... :) Also, only the national broadcasters vacate the FM network; local radio stations are free to keep using FM for the foreseeable future.
- hvidgaard 10y agoDAB was significantly worse powerwise compared to FM transmission. DAB+ has rectified some of the issues, but it remains to see if it actually better.
- TheGirondin 10y ago>It will take at least a decade or two to free up the FM band for other uses anyway. Norway will probably wait and use it in a way that aligns with the rest of the world, rather than finding its own local use for the spectrum. And that's the difference between an entrepreneurial, capitalist minded society and a socialist minded one.
- Aoyagi 10y agoSure, why keep something that's cheap and easily accessible operational when you can have something that's easier to monetise, track, and whatnot...
- rikkus 10y agoHow is DAB easier to track?
- askvictor 10y agoThe article didn't talk about why? It's not as if the FM bandwidth is particularly valuable, being quite a low frequency. Unlike digital tv, there doesn't seem to be a particularly pressing reason to do this; if broadcasters are happy to keep broadcasting on FM, why stop them?
- krkoch 10y agoIt's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run. Because of all the fjords and valleys, you need many weak transmitters to avoid reflections. Also, because it's FM, they can't overlap in frequency. With DAB, two time-delayed signals (either reflections or multiple towers transmitting the same data-fountain) will enhance the signal. This means that you can have fewer towers.
- winter_blue 10y ago> It's because the infrastructure for FM is quite expensive to run. Won't the free market decide if it's too expensive to run? Or is even radio run by the state in Norway? Otherwise, why prohibit private companies from licensing & broadcasting FM radio? I mean the free market would decide stop to broadcasting when it's not profitable for them anymore. Or is everything state-run in Norway? When I read "one member of the ruling coalition was scathing" and "MP from the Progress Party", I'm thinking, the state (and these MPs) shouldn't even be involved and thinking about this, and should leave it to the free market.
- cuchoi 10y agoProbably they have State infrastructure, maybe it was never profitable for businesses to invest in FM radios in that geography. They still CAN do it, but they won't.
- digi_owl 10y agoThe infra used to be state operated, under a cooperation between NRK and Televerket (that in the 90s was turned into Telenor). In recent years NRK has transferred ownership of this to Telenor, and instead rents capacity from them. So effectively it is privately owned and operated, under a "natural" monopoly.
- barking 10y agoI have never liked FM radio. Far too much time wasted fiddling with telescopic aerials. I've always listened to AM broadcasts in preference. I don't listen to much radio at all any more except via podcasts.
- ringe 10y agoThis is all about lobbying politicians. Very hard to understand why they want to set aside separate bandwidth for different sorts of media, when Internet access would provide all we needed. We have digital radio, digital television broadcast, separate emergency frequencies and so goes the list. What about gathering around standard that work and are already in place? What about making cell phone and Internet connectivity more robust? But no. Let's throw billions in taxes down the drain. For instance: The emergency network fails when there's a storm. Then we're back to RHF! From the inhabitant perspective, this is all a power party. A few people with high positions get to make big decisions and pat each other's back. I'm sure the CEOs of the businesses getting the contracts are good at patting backs too. Good thing we already pay so much taxes we don't even notice the difference. Except for the bumpy roads and understaffed elderly homes.
- Angostura 10y agoErrr - are you really suggesting that we really move all broadcast media to TCP/IP? You're going to give free streaming plans to everyone in the country? Or does it perhaps make sense to use dedicated broadcast technology for free-to-air broadcasts?
- Johnythree 10y agoThe disadvantage of radio broadcasting is that it ties up valuable spectrum, has only one direction, and only allows a limited number of channels. The advantage of streaming internet is that it allows unlimited channels, while only using bandwidth for one channel at a time for each user. Depending on the number of channels you wish to provide, and the number of users in each area, there is a point where Internet streaming is way ahead.
- mikebay 10y agoYep, all what we need is government controlled news, no alternative possibilities. Welldone norway! We need to keep radio waves clean from bad russian hackers! I wonder without pirate stations would there be even any alternative opinions/ music / lifestyle existing ? In future we all have to listen government proven news and music. I wonder why UK is not following ?
- darkerside 10y agoSome simple math- 1,500 crowns * 2M unequipped cars = 3B crown That's 3B in capital costs (plus the cost of radios in unequipped homes) to save 250M/year. Seems expensive, but not totally out of the realm of reason?
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoIt is a complete and utter travesty perpetrated by politicians who were convinced by snake oil/electronics salesmen of the (highly dubious) superiority of DAB, and now have too much skin in the game to turn back. Personally, I've been working lately on building an ESP8266/VS1053 based webradio into my nice old wooden 1960s radio. I'm using the variable plate capacitor for the AM tuner as input for channel selection, so for all the world it will look like a still-working FM tuner. Total BOM cost will be <$30.
- alkonaut 10y agoExactly. It nearly happened in neighboring Sweden, but luckily the plans were cancelled. I mean just imagine that the plans to scrap FM and go digital were made before mobile broadband, podcasts and streaming music. Before they would have sworn billions, every person and every car would already be streaming internet audio anyway. That's what will happen in norway.
- paulofalcao 10y agoSo stupid, I am completely against this.
- tyfon 10y agoAs a Norwegian I support this. However it would be better to focus on 4g + streaming rather than DAB.
- m23khan 10y agoWhat are there plans for the AM frequency? I rely heavily on my AM radio stations here in Canada to get my daily dose of local/national/international news!!
- scholia 10y agoIdeally, long wave, AM and FM spectrum will be used for DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) instead. To quote Wikipedia: "The principle of DRM is that bandwidth is the limited element, and computer processing power is cheap; modern CPU-intensive audio compression techniques enable more efficient use of available bandwidth, at the expense of processing resources." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale
- geff82 10y agoOK, so you switch off a completely fine technology with billions invested, rendering useless multi-millions of fine working radios. For what? I think this will be the death blow to radio. People will not go DAB if not absolutely needed, they will essentially try to go "internet" directly and thereby eliminating classic "radio". Maybe you'll use the DAB in your car sometimes, but I can't imagine it will happen that you replace every FM radio in your house (alarm clock, kitchen radio, TV, legacy hifi-systems, etc...) with DAB now. In those cases, you'll switch so a full online solution like one of the gazillions internet radio stations. FM is dead with DAB. My prediction: "Radio" will something you'll probably find in cars - but almost nowhere else. The user base will be crippled totally, rendering "classic" radio into something unprofitable, as revenue from ads will go down. But as I am a digital child, I also look forward: being a podcaster now in the right countries could be unexpectedly monetarily interesting.
- Already__Taken 10y agoWouldn't we be better using this spectrum for even more data to stream anything, including DAB?
- scholia 10y agoFM is amazingly cheap, and green. You can reach millions of listeners with high quality sound. In many cases, you can reach tens of millions for exactly the same cost. Until you need another mast, the extra cost per user is $0. Smartphone chips already include FM so there's no extra cost to reaching mobile users, with no extra bandwidth consumption. (Not FM's fault if some smartphone makers don't use the FM capabilities and make users consume expensive and limited cellular spectrum instead.) The drawbacks with FM are (1) the limited number of stations and (2) users can't choose their own music. That's why there's a market for different services. However, there's still a market for live radio: it's free and has billions of listeners. It's also a very efficient way of handling phone-ins and live commentaries on sports events, among other things.
- gozur88 10y ago
- lcfcjs 10y agoThis would be great because then I could receive streams of the radio from the UK. It's impossible to get sporting events via anything except FM radio.
- sweetjesus 10y agoWhat they should do is turn off the spectrum a bit each year ranging from the top frequency down. That way people can adjust, stations can move on the dial, and there is no cold turkey. In the US this might mean I could hear my favorite Top-40(tm)songs only 24*60mins/4mins/40songs times a day, (and who knows if I would be willing to buy [obnoxious furniture store ad] furniture any more at that rate) but it would be a resonable way to do it.
- Sami_Lehtinen 10y agoFinland used DAB since 1998. It was given up on 2005 because nobody actually used it.