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Radio Australia is only broadcast from 13 small area FM transmitters, 5 of which are in Papua New Guinea.
How much will 7 new FM transmitters cost?
In 2017 Michelle Guthrie past ABC MD closed 9 high powered high frequency transmitters for Radio Australia and Territory Radio as a trade for ABC/SBS medium power DAB+ transmitters in Canberra, Hobart and Darwin! She said that Short Wave was "old technology" but never tested new DRM technology, despite having 2 transmitters which were capable of transmitting Digital Radio Mondiale.
Contrast this with Radio New Zealand - Pacific. They have just let a $AU 4 million contract for a new high power high frequency (Short Wave) DRM/AM capable transmitter which will cover most of the South Pacific. (There are no black spots because the signals are reflected from the upper atmosphere). So, they can warn of cyclones and tsunamis to those in a boat well away from land! Radio Australia cannot.
RNZ-P has been transmitting in Digital Radio Mondiale since 2005. This system produces sound as good as FM over huge areas. In addition, images and detailed indexed text can also be transmitted. It can also simultaneously transmit emergency warnings to radios in the affected areas. So, for example weather maps showing where the cyclones are, can be received. New DRM receivers contain a WiFi transmitter, so that the images can be displayed on a tablet.
This high frequency DRM technology could cover the whole of Australia, if a high powered signals were radiated from the centre of Australia, well away from all threats. The Radio Australia transmitter site in Shepperton Vic has been sold. If Radio Australia transmitter(s) and ABC News/ABC Sport/ABC Emergencies transmitter for Australia, should all be transmitted from the same site to minimise costs.
... except the ABC's triennial funding arrangement was introduced in 1988 and has nothing whatever to do with the "three year electoral cycle" ...
Note that RA and the ABC's international TV service is broadcast unencrypted on DVB via Intelsat 18.
Source:
https://www.lyngsat.com/Intelsat-18.html as at 26-10-2022
It would be preferable to receive the broadcasts via satellite which is not subject to being cut if transmissions were via IP optical fibre and/or rebroadcast on fm in the host country.
A citizen in the host country who cannot afford a satellite receiver, it would be preferable to resume AM SW and/or DRM+ SW transmissions which is not subject to the host country switching off RA's fm re-transmission facilities.
Therefore resumption if AM SW and AM DRM+ transmissions should resume transmissions from Australia to the world.
Thank you,
Anthony, I've said this before about RA, Belfield, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation
To me, Mr St. John's statement in the first paragraph says it all about upper management: they don't know about current broadcasting technologies and they don't know how to apply the latest technology even with the ABC's use of a DRM+ transmitter in Wangaratta.
Source: https://radioinfo.com.au/news/australia-successfully-tests-drm-in-am-fm/.
If AM SW transmissions being 'old hat', FM transmissions are 'old hat' too.
It would be better for the Government to have made appropriations for DRM+ receivers to send to our Pacific Island neighbours if analogue SW transmissions are regarded as 'old hat'.
Thank you,
Anthony, we have porridge for brains management who don't know their left from their right, Belfield, in the land of the Wangal and Darug peoples of the Eora Nation
The problem with using satellite broadcasting is that the receiving dish must be accurately pointed at the geostationary satellite. The satellites are 36,000 km above earth, so the signal is weak. Also for the C band transmissions, the dish is much larger than the ones used in the Ku band such as used by pay TV and VAST. Cyclones make satellite dishes vulnerable to damage, and also it is common for electricity supplies to fail for the receiver. If that is a program source for a local transmitter it is vulnerable as well. This is another reason why Radio New Zealand has been transmitting in DRM since 2005 to feed good quality audio to Pacific Island broadcasters.
Satellite broadcasting cannot be used on anything which is moving such as boat and vehicles, where as it is not a problem for HF radio.
In addition boats and vehicles can easily be out of range from mobile broadband transmitters. Satellite phones use hundreds of moving satellites, however the cost is high and the bandwidth is insufficient for data communications where each phone has to be sent their own individual program feed.
Lastly DAB+ had in its standard satellite broadcasting which is not being used, and pay radio in the USA (SiriusXM) is only just viable, so most of their output is fed via the internet. This is because satellite bandwidth and time is very expensive. The Radio Australia sound channel is piggybacking the http://www.abcaustralia.net.au/tuning TV signal. If the ABC was not transmitting ABC Australia TV, the transmission of Radio Australia would be much more expensive.
All the more for Mr St. John.
* c-band dishes have a diameter of 3m compared to 1 to 1.5m diameter dishes for k-band. Our Pacific Island neighbours may be subject to violent storms resulting in loss of power and damage to receiving equipment whether the equipment is owned by the citizen or the rebroadcaster.
* however, despite signals from geostationary satellites being weak, forward error correction (FEC) in the digital signal enables decoding of signals with high probability of accuracy. DRM+ also implements FEC.
* Nevertheless, I agree of the impractibility of lugging a satellite dish on a boat in the middle of the sea and the impractibility of receiving such signals in vehicles. Satellite dishes need to be "rock" steady for satisfactory reception of signals.
* in addition, I agree of the impractibility of using data-over-mobile where distance between cell towers and the car and boat make reception difficult and impossible.
* then there is the issue of vhf frequencies being line-of-sight compared to the SW band whose signals are reflected from the ionosphere.
Conclusion, resume SW transmissions and implement DRM+ as a mode of transmission over SW.
Thank you,
Anthony, management sbould listen to people with common sense, such as Mr St. John, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation, Belfield
Anthony,
The ABC does not run its own transmitters, that is subcontracted to BAI Communications who did the tests in Wangaratta and Wodonga.
FM broadcasting started in 1936 with stereo being added in 1961. AM has been broadcasting for 100 years. Their capital city (excluding Darwin) still uses AM for their main program!
You are a bit mixed up on the terminology in DRM. DRM30 is DRM at any frequency below 30 MHz ie the HF ("SW") and MF bands. LF is not used in Australia for broadcasting. DRM+ is for any frequency above 30 MHz. eg Band1, Band 2 ("FM") band. It will work in band 3, but we use nearly all of it for VHF TV and DAB+.
Since DRM+ was the latest upgrade to the specification, but all DRM receivers must receive all broadcast frequencies they just call it DRM.
As for C band antennas, the diameter is determined not only by the frequency but the lower the signal strength, the larger the dish required. Broadcasters need reception during heavy rain and the water absorbs the signal, requiring a much larger dish. Also if the receive location is near the equator the dish edge is horizontal filling it with water during cyclones. This changes the shape defocussing the dish.
You can have as much error correction if you like, but it is useless if the signal is not strong enough to demodulate.
Reception on moving vehicles and boats requires a servo motor driven mount which can move in elevation and azimuth as the mounting moves. It has to be done with high accuracy. The only one I have seen in action is on the Bass Strait ferry, and the weather was not rough.
If you want to broadcast over large areas you must use the ionosphere otherwise you are limited to a radius of around 100 km using a 200 m tower and high transmission power if using frequencies above 100 MHz. The ionosphere is useless at transmission frequencies above 30 MHz because signals go straight through and keep going.
The ionosphere is fine using DRM because it will reject all but the strongest reflection, just like DVB-T used by Australian TV. This is because the data is sent quickly in bursts leaving time for the reflected signals to dissipate. In AM the multiple reflections cause distortion of the audio. In addition, the images and text are repeated in a carousel and the receiver knows what data contains errors, so it will only update on good data.
Mr St. John said:
"The ABC does not run its own transmitters, that is subcontracted to BAI Communications who did the tests in Wangaratta and Wodonga."
The ABC's transmitters have always been outsourced starting with The PMG then Telecom Australia then Telstra. Since the 1990s, the transmitters were privatised to various entities including a Canadian pension fund. Today, the current owner is BA Communications who is paid nearly $200 million per annum, which is 18% of its $1 billion+ budget.
Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221019041647/https://www.abcfriends.net.au/plan_for_transmission
While the ABC does not own the transmitters the ABC requires knowledge of how its signals are distributed and disseminated between its studios and transmitters as well as inter-studio distribution.
It also includes the studios interfacing its signals with the privatised distribution centre at Ingleburn.
Knowledge of the DRM experiments at Wodonga and Wangarratta on BA Corporation's transmitters using ABC content, the ABC would have knowledge and experience from these test transmissions.
I'd be concerned if the ABC did not learn anything at all from the DRM experiment and not plan for future implementation of broadcasting technology such as DRM.
Indeed, the ABC certainly has been proactive in planning its future services on its digital platform.
Consequently, if the future is a digital platform, will the ABC be intellectually lazy and totally abandon broadcasting technology such as DRM?
Recall the risk of host countries cutting rebroadcasting RA and its IP streams if the ABC's content is not in accord with the host country's policies.
Hence the need for the ABC to consider implementing newer modes of broadcast technology in light of the recent DRM experiments even if the DRM experiment was about local content.
Thank you
Anthony, the ABC still don't know their left hand from their right hand, Belfield, in the land of the Wangal and Eora Peoples of the Eora Nation
Anthony, It is not BA Communications it is BAI Communications ie Broadcast Australia International Communications. Whilst they started out being a broadcast infrastructure company for Australia, it is now trying to get into the 5G broadband rollout worldwide. There is no growth in the money they get from the Government to maintain the Australian broadcast infrastructure.
The ABC is a half owner with WIN TV the other for MediaHub in Ingleburn.
I have asked the ABC for a copy of the report on the DRM tests. As yet no response.
The telco industry worldwide has been successfully been convincing broadcasters that they only way to feed an audience is via the phone network, because they have to provide a separate two way signal to each individual phone and they can charge for this to boost their own bottom line. There are two researched documents from broadcasters proving that DAB+ is by the far cheapest and least polluting method of distributing program to large audiences. DRM has not been included, but now that it has proven that it can carry 18 programs on a converted single FM transmitter, it will be even better particularly in band 1 (48 - 68 MHz) our old analog TV channels 0 - 2. This is because the lower the frequency the more efficient is the transmitter. Band 1 is a quarter of the frequency used for DAB+.
I don't know what the ABC will do with the results of the DRM tests. They have not used DAB+ in capital cities for the transmission of imaged (except station logos) or more than a few lines of text. Both DAB+ and DRM are capable of transmitting slide shows and Journaline.
Mr St. John said:
"The telco industry worldwide has been successfully been convincing broadcasters that they only way to feed an audience is via the phone network, because they have to provide a separate two way signal to each individual phone and they can charge for this to boost their own bottom line..."
A mobile phone plan can cost $40 per month for a phone, sms and 'infinite' data plan. The majority of data consumption is consuming video and audio content from podcasts, youtube, social media and from broadcasts. The latter may be live streams and random access streams such as for example iView (ABC) and TenPlay.
It would be uneconomic to purchase a comprehensive phone plan if the majority of the data consumption comes from accessing FTA broadcasters which can accessed by using a radio and tv receiver.
However a comprehensive phone plan may be 'worth' the price if the content is unavailable on FTA and the content can only be accessed via IP streams.
Providers providing streaming content gives providers can access to information in real time of a consumer's content consumption that is unavailable on FTA broadcasting.
As a result it may well explain the 'selling' by "...telcos successfully... convincing broadcasters..." to use IP streaming rather than broadcasting because of real time availability of the consumer's media habits.
Nevertheless, when it comes to broadcasting programs to our neighbours in the Pacific and the rest of the world, top level management's thinking seems to be confined to local consumption.
The result of needing to supply soft power about Australia and maintaining Australian interests may well require further boost to the legislation and Parliamentary appropriation to ensure that other interests don't fill the vacuum by virtue of the absence or lack of overseas broadcasts by RA.
Then radio is but a tool in a portfolio of soft power.
Thank you,
Anthony, management need to think outside local consumption, Belfield, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation
Anthony,
The internet cannot cover the Pacific Ocean unless satellite communications has a huge drop in price which is unlikely to occur.
Telcos cannot handle all of radio's audience listening at the same time particularly during breakfast, which is the highest rating time of the day.
Not only will they need a massive equipment upgrade in base stations, they would have to use much more bandwidth to carry the signals which the ACMA will auction for many millions of dollars.
The telcos want the distribution of full motion video in high definition, which has the greatest profits, radio with high compression rates is not very profitable.
The internet is very wasteful in electricity and the generation of carbon dioxide.
By far the cheapest program distribution is DAB+ and DRM. If broadcasters who can transmit 18 programs instead of 1 from a transmitter were to transmit real popular programming instead of a stored recycling of music recording, then they can fight back against the audio on demand companies.
Anthony,
The current base stations and interconnections are sized for the current load of simultaneous phone calls, and data transmission.
If broadcasting was switched off in Sydney for example, at breakfast time radio up to 5 million listeners will want to be connected at the same time. In addition they are mobile moving from cell to cell in cars and public transport.
This means that telcos will need enough bandwidth that the ACMA auctions for many millions of dollars for a channel for each listen to receive and another to transmit data back to the "radio" station. Will the telcos want to install this huge increase in the number of transmitter/receivers on each base station for each listener along with associated connections back to the broadcaster. Remember that they can move increasing the load on one base station and decreasing in another. This is not very predictable. Will telcos want to do this for about 2 hours a week day? The rest of the day and at weekends, this extra capacity will be unused. Who will pay for this extra tranceivers and spectrum bandwidth, the users of mobile phones!
By comparison broadcasting only requires one signal for all listeners who wants that program. Since 2009 there has been DAB+ broadcasting including extra programs. Some broadcasters transmit a station logo and perhaps an image of album art and a few lines of text such the title of the music playing, the weather forecast and a news titbit. They should be using this metadata for more interesting things. It is the chicken or the egg situation. Most receivers will not display images so broadcasters do not wish to invest in this, listeners don't want to pay for the display because they cannot see a benefit in being able to see a station logo! This is an extension of why should the audience buy a digital receiver. That was answered by TV in 2010 - 2013 when analog TV was switched off. Who now would want to go back to the narrow blurry images, complete with ghosts and grain let alone poor sound!