[ NNSquad ] Re: NAB is serious about mandating FM radios in every cell phone

[Nuno Garcia <ngarcia@ngarcia.net>]

Not too long ago, governments all throughout Europe made big money out of licensing 3G wavelength slots to mobile operators. So I think the drive to reclaim public wavelengths has been the possibility to license wavelength slots to private operators. But the telco business has been down, and thus a new wavelength auction would not be as successful now as it was before, and thus, I'm guessing that the thrive to push for DAB or DVB-T has also diminished.

Once a political decision sets a date to this, it will happen, regardless on how many car-radios have been sold. In fact, the number of existing legacy equipments was my argument for not believing this would happen some day, back in 2000. Furthermore, it's just my imagination, or do you also think the industry would be extremely happy to comply with a mandatory upgrade in TV and radio systems (both fixed and mobile)? (not so much the consumers, though, who would end up picking the tab...)

I'm not saying I agree with it, my father was a hobbyist and a CB operator, and I think the use of determined ranges of radio frequencies which have been public domain for so long, that its this is now an acquired right. And we have uncountable reports of use of such frequencies for purposes of fight against totalitarism (we may also have reports of use of such public means to disseminate terrorist or fundamentalist ideals). 

Despite my opinion, and all things weighted, I believe that the only argument able to stop these decisions would be a technological one, that is, if no standard could be found or it could be proved that the new system does not bring any advantages over the legacy one. And even so, political need to control contents would still be a major drive for carrying on with this line of action.

I'm pretty sure that after Spain has switched to DVB-T sooner or later, all EU countries will follow.

Bottom line, this is a political decision, and as such, it may very well change in the next round of elections.

Cheers from Portugal,

Nuno Garcia

2010/8/27 trotter <m.nuttall@ukonline.co.uk>

At 10:46 26/08/2010, you wrote:

In Europe there is a very strong movement to replace FM with DAB (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting). There are already some pilots in Spain, which btw, has shut down its public broadcast analog TV signals and replaced it with digital TV broadcast early this year (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Spain>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Spain).

Well the UK has moved backwards from digital radio adoption and the analogue fm switch off
with the previous target date of 2015 now seen as very unlikely with the change of government
here.

I did not know that Spain had some digital radio plans, as I remember it only Finland( or another
Scandinavian country) had DAB while Germany has dab+ which is an incompatible but superior
system that sadly the BBC have deemed we cannot have it.

I think that (unfortunately) this will also happen to FM, as the urge to clear/clean/free the radio spectrum has not disappeared from legislators at the EU (apart from several other motivations, the need to sell more wavelength licences, along with the fact that it is easier to monitor and control digital contents when compared to analog, are the two key motivators, IMHO).

I very much doubt it will happen for a long time since only 1% of new cars in the uk
have digital radios fitted and that is their biggest market for listeners.


Martin N

Running MorphOS v2.4 on Mac Mini, Moderator of MiniDisc,amithlonopen,bwfc Yahoogroups