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Consensus 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 stre

by dagss 10y ago

Consensus 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 ago
I 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 ago
    Or 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
      USB-A, USB-B or USB-C?
      - freehunter 10y ago
        It honestly does not matter, since they're compatible. You're trying to make it controversial, but it's really not. My phone uses Lightning, but that doesn't make a bit of difference when I plug it into my car.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Well, they’re not entirely. I recently bought a Nexus 5X, and realised I don’t have a single compatible cable – and had to buy some adapters. Not everyone will have adapters easily available, nor will people want to deal with them.
        freehunter 10y ago
        Your phone didn't come with a USB-C to USB-A cable? I find that hard to believe.
        Nullabillity 10y ago
        The 5X only comes with a C-C cable. The 6P comes with both an A-C and a C-C cable.
        freehunter 10y ago
        Wow, that's a huge mistake. Especially considering how rare USB-C was in 2015.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  It will have to replace it because users chose different things. In Austria more people now listen to Spotify than DAB.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  >I 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. -True, but surely one could simply allocate bandwidth in the 4G network to multicast at least the most popular channels? (This may be a very stupid question; I know a thing or two about broadcast networks, but hardly a thing about computer networks. It all went downhill after Token Ring, as far as I am concerned. :)) That being said, I think it would have been smarter to stick with FM, but we should cut our politicians some slack - I think it would be unfair to expect them to realize in 1992-1993 or whenever the decision to go DAB was made that by the time it gained some traction, there would be a national, wireless, high-speed data network which could to a large extent provide the same service DAB does. DAB coverage is still spotty, though, claims to the contrary nonwithstanding - when I drive along one of the most heavily used routes in Møre og Romsdal county (E39/E136 between Ålesund and Vestnes), I get consistently good FM coverage and DAB with decent quality most of the time, but several dozen dropouts lasting from a few seconds to perhaps a minute.
  - catdog 10y ago
    > -True, but surely one could simply allocate bandwidth in the 4G network to multicast at least the most popular channels? (This may be a very stupid question; I know a thing or two about broadcast networks, but hardly a thing about computer networks. It all went downhill after Token Ring, as far as I am concerned. :)) Such technology seems to exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Broadcast_Multicast_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Broadcast_Multicast... I really don't understand why everyone builds broadcast networks using a separate technology these days instead of just integrating it into mobile broadband networks. Building separate infrastructures (even radio and TV broadcast typically don't use the same technology) seems insane. Also the model of having a few broadcast stations will most likely loose more and more dominance while users are shifting to streaming and non linear things so a technology which is flexible enough to adopt to that change in demand seems just right.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      > instead of just integrating it into mobile broadband networks Because mobile networks are oversubscribed. They're simply not designed to support everyone using them heavily at the same time - it's why folks are advised to stay off cell phones during emergencies, or fail to be able to connect if they do use them. Much like other ISPs, there's little incentive for mobile providers to build out to properly support their customers when it works most of the time even when oversubscribed.
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  > For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Yes, but that's a problem for the telco's to solve, if they want to continue selling mobile internet. So they have strong incentives to solve it. > One is emergency broadcasts How is having to buy an expensive device to listen to emergency broadcasts a benefit? One of the reasons DAB was scrapped in Sweden was this. Everyone and their grandmother has a bunch of FM radios already, no purchases necessary, it's deployed, it works. Shutting down FM means less people will be able to listen to emergency broadcasts. That's bad, not a benefit. Besides, most modern smartphones have emergency broadcast functionality that's accessible to local authorities. And everyone and their grandmother already has a smartphone. > the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. DAB or DAB+ ? The poor bleeding edgers who bought a DAB radio got pretty pissed when they had to throw it out and buy a DAB+ radio instead. All five of them. Not a good track record exactly. Meanwhile, FM has been going strong for almost 100 years now. > But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you support? There's two: iOS CarPlay and Android Auto. Works great. Everyone already has a smartphone, and can then use whatever streaming app or service they want. > I also think we tech geeks overestimate the popularity of streaming in cars The only thing being overestimated is the general public's eagerness to run out and buy a DAB+ car radio. It's pretty much at zero. Look, broadcast radio is going away just like broadcast television. It's a dying medium. And to force a change while it's dying will only hasten its demise.
  - makomk 10y ago
    If the power goes out because of an emergency, you can probably say goodbye to the mobile phone network - towers tend to have, at best, a few hours of battery backup if that. The sheer number of towers and the fact they're unmanned installations located mainly in urban areas where space is at a premium means there's not really any way to change this.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Emergency broadcasts should run on AM radio if we're worried about reliability. AM is brain dead simple to demodulate to the point you can do it accidentally with the right length of wire really. Kill FM, reserve AM for an emergency band.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Audio is surprisingly low-bandwidth compared to what today's networks are designed for. I'm not sure what the total bandwidth of a site is, but I've gotten 130 Mbps speed test results over 4G - right there you have up to 2000 typical DAB+ streams, and I'm certain a site can handle multiples of that. And if people are listening to something like Spotify, a lot of the data will be cached.
  - dest 10y ago
    Still, listen a lot to the radio on 4G and you will most likely hit you mobile data cap (1GB ~ 1h of 64kbit audio a day for a month)
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Yeah we can only hope that data plans get right-sized so you can't burn through your whole cap in 60 seconds of full-speed downloading. Although for music in particular we are seeing a lot of "music services are unmetered" types of plans. I remember in Sweden back in the early 3G days (384 kbps of pure speed), the public broadcaster audio streams were unmetered and I would usually listen to those instead of FM since I used Bluetooth headphones.
    - jschwartzi 10y ago
      T-Mobile in the US doesn't limit data usage for many streaming services, including Spotify.
- noselasd 10y ago
  LTE networks allows for muticasting data too though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast-broadcast_single-frequency_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast-broadcast_single-fre...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dagss 10y ago
  I wasn't really talking about "replacing 1:1 now". The point is radio is about to die the same way broadcast TV is about to die. (The radio and TV stations may do just fine, you can listen/watch shows from them online too...it is just not being able to hit the pause button that will seem queer in some years). Perhaps it may take as long as 10 more years, but we could have kept FM alive just fine for that long. This just accelerates the process. I sure hope the DAB investment was meant for a lot longer than 10 years.
digi_owl 10y ago
And in the end it would be Telenor that benefits either way...

by dagss 10y ago

audunw 10y ago

I 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 ago
  Or 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
    USB-A, USB-B or USB-C?
    - freehunter 10y ago
      It honestly does not matter, since they're compatible. You're trying to make it controversial, but it's really not. My phone uses Lightning, but that doesn't make a bit of difference when I plug it into my car.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Well, they’re not entirely. I recently bought a Nexus 5X, and realised I don’t have a single compatible cable – and had to buy some adapters. Not everyone will have adapters easily available, nor will people want to deal with them.
        freehunter 10y ago
        Your phone didn't come with a USB-C to USB-A cable? I find that hard to believe.
        Nullabillity 10y ago
        The 5X only comes with a C-C cable. The 6P comes with both an A-C and a C-C cable.
        freehunter 10y ago
        Wow, that's a huge mistake. Especially considering how rare USB-C was in 2015.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
It will have to replace it because users chose different things. In Austria more people now listen to Spotify than DAB.
lb1lf 10y ago
>I 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. -True, but surely one could simply allocate bandwidth in the 4G network to multicast at least the most popular channels? (This may be a very stupid question; I know a thing or two about broadcast networks, but hardly a thing about computer networks. It all went downhill after Token Ring, as far as I am concerned. :)) That being said, I think it would have been smarter to stick with FM, but we should cut our politicians some slack - I think it would be unfair to expect them to realize in 1992-1993 or whenever the decision to go DAB was made that by the time it gained some traction, there would be a national, wireless, high-speed data network which could to a large extent provide the same service DAB does. DAB coverage is still spotty, though, claims to the contrary nonwithstanding - when I drive along one of the most heavily used routes in Møre og Romsdal county (E39/E136 between Ålesund and Vestnes), I get consistently good FM coverage and DAB with decent quality most of the time, but several dozen dropouts lasting from a few seconds to perhaps a minute.
- catdog 10y ago
  > -True, but surely one could simply allocate bandwidth in the 4G network to multicast at least the most popular channels? (This may be a very stupid question; I know a thing or two about broadcast networks, but hardly a thing about computer networks. It all went downhill after Token Ring, as far as I am concerned. :)) Such technology seems to exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Broadcast_Multicast_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Broadcast_Multicast... I really don't understand why everyone builds broadcast networks using a separate technology these days instead of just integrating it into mobile broadband networks. Building separate infrastructures (even radio and TV broadcast typically don't use the same technology) seems insane. Also the model of having a few broadcast stations will most likely loose more and more dominance while users are shifting to streaming and non linear things so a technology which is flexible enough to adopt to that change in demand seems just right.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    > instead of just integrating it into mobile broadband networks Because mobile networks are oversubscribed. They're simply not designed to support everyone using them heavily at the same time - it's why folks are advised to stay off cell phones during emergencies, or fail to be able to connect if they do use them. Much like other ISPs, there's little incentive for mobile providers to build out to properly support their customers when it works most of the time even when oversubscribed.
henrikschroder 10y ago
> For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Yes, but that's a problem for the telco's to solve, if they want to continue selling mobile internet. So they have strong incentives to solve it. > One is emergency broadcasts How is having to buy an expensive device to listen to emergency broadcasts a benefit? One of the reasons DAB was scrapped in Sweden was this. Everyone and their grandmother has a bunch of FM radios already, no purchases necessary, it's deployed, it works. Shutting down FM means less people will be able to listen to emergency broadcasts. That's bad, not a benefit. Besides, most modern smartphones have emergency broadcast functionality that's accessible to local authorities. And everyone and their grandmother already has a smartphone. > the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. DAB or DAB+ ? The poor bleeding edgers who bought a DAB radio got pretty pissed when they had to throw it out and buy a DAB+ radio instead. All five of them. Not a good track record exactly. Meanwhile, FM has been going strong for almost 100 years now. > But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you support? There's two: iOS CarPlay and Android Auto. Works great. Everyone already has a smartphone, and can then use whatever streaming app or service they want. > I also think we tech geeks overestimate the popularity of streaming in cars The only thing being overestimated is the general public's eagerness to run out and buy a DAB+ car radio. It's pretty much at zero. Look, broadcast radio is going away just like broadcast television. It's a dying medium. And to force a change while it's dying will only hasten its demise.
- makomk 10y ago
  If the power goes out because of an emergency, you can probably say goodbye to the mobile phone network - towers tend to have, at best, a few hours of battery backup if that. The sheer number of towers and the fact they're unmanned installations located mainly in urban areas where space is at a premium means there's not really any way to change this.
- XorNot 10y ago
  Emergency broadcasts should run on AM radio if we're worried about reliability. AM is brain dead simple to demodulate to the point you can do it accidentally with the right length of wire really. Kill FM, reserve AM for an emergency band.
kalleboo 10y ago
Audio is surprisingly low-bandwidth compared to what today's networks are designed for. I'm not sure what the total bandwidth of a site is, but I've gotten 130 Mbps speed test results over 4G - right there you have up to 2000 typical DAB+ streams, and I'm certain a site can handle multiples of that. And if people are listening to something like Spotify, a lot of the data will be cached.
- dest 10y ago
  Still, listen a lot to the radio on 4G and you will most likely hit you mobile data cap (1GB ~ 1h of 64kbit audio a day for a month)
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Yeah we can only hope that data plans get right-sized so you can't burn through your whole cap in 60 seconds of full-speed downloading. Although for music in particular we are seeing a lot of "music services are unmetered" types of plans. I remember in Sweden back in the early 3G days (384 kbps of pure speed), the public broadcaster audio streams were unmetered and I would usually listen to those instead of FM since I used Bluetooth headphones.
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    T-Mobile in the US doesn't limit data usage for many streaming services, including Spotify.
noselasd 10y ago
LTE networks allows for muticasting data too though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast-broadcast_single-frequency_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast-broadcast_single-fre...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dagss 10y ago
I wasn't really talking about "replacing 1:1 now". The point is radio is about to die the same way broadcast TV is about to die. (The radio and TV stations may do just fine, you can listen/watch shows from them online too...it is just not being able to hit the pause button that will seem queer in some years). Perhaps it may take as long as 10 more years, but we could have kept FM alive just fine for that long. This just accelerates the process. I sure hope the DAB investment was meant for a lot longer than 10 years.

digi_owl 10y ago

And in the end it would be Telenor that benefits either way...