In Norway we have for a long time had an ongoing debate about digital radio, and then DAB. It is hard to see that DAB will succeed, sales figures says it all. Last year there were sold about 60. 000 DAB radios and 725.000 FM radios in Norway. I don’t doubt the numbers being correct, just imagine all the mobile phones that today are equipted with a FM radio! Recently I also read that also Germany is haivng doubt about building out their DAB network.

I was an early adopter to DAB, I really like the quality of the broadcasts of the channels I listen most to. They have all gotten decent bandwidth, and that is where the main problem is with DAB, there isn’t enough bandwidth available. Endusers demand more channels and more bandwidth (better quality) for the channels. We can see the same about arguments being made about digital TV, RiksTV isn’t something for the future. Satelite and cable tv have both far more bandwidth available. We are about to enter the HD era, but don’t have to many technical solutions available.

It was with great joy I read Ashley Highfield’s blog entry ”I Love Digital Radio“. It lists up in a great way the problems we have with DAB and competing Internet Radio Stations:

The quality of the IP stream is often woeful. It frequently buffers, meaning I hear nothing for seconds or even minutes on end. It frequently loses the wireless connection, and sometimes gets confused and wants the WEP key again. I switch it off and on again. About once a day. By contrast the DAB radio just works. Press the button, and on it comes: excellent quality; reasonable range of choice; no bother.

He continues with showing how we have failed to make DAB different from FM, with examples on how DAB should have been:

I want DAB to show me weather, traffic and travel information graphically, on the same nice big screen, but unlike IP, reliably, simply, without installation and configuration. It’s all possible: I’ve seen it working from our development teams and research engineers. I want DAB to use its metadata – the information about the programmes – to differentiate itself from FM, which is surely its biggest competitor, rather than from IP. I want DAB to look like a product of the future, not the past.

For me it basically sounds like small embedded Linux system with a decent screen and a nice touch interface. Now that would have been different. Most of these features could have been easily made available on a computer, but the few DAB cards that were available for Windows-based computers seem all to be gone, and left is small retro boxes with an inbuilt half-decent DAB tuner.

The biggest problem with DAB is that consumers listening habits are changing We still listen to the big national radio channels, but instead of listening to the many small local stations, we find ourselves some nice Internet Radio Stations/services that stream our favourite music. He mentions Last.fm, which is a great example, but I will also add the many radio stations broadcasting over the Internet with AAC Plus. Superb sound quality, and often stable connections. DAB could survive in Norway if we say that the bigger channels should only be available on DAB and not FM. But the politicians are not willing to make the decission. In the meantime the alternatives are getting better ans better.