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Why don'tWhy don't we ask Ruxandra to tell the Australian consumer market they will need to buy another new radio to hear DRM services... Or how about we just run with DAB+ for metro/provincial and FM for regionals. We already have both technologies and won't annoy our audiences with yet another standard.
Darren,
Around 60 % of the population live in capital cities all with large populations. DAB+ is ideal here because you have enough stations to feed the around 20 radio programs per transmitter.
In country areas a commercial broadcaster has an AM licence and a supplementary FM licence. There isn't the population to pay for DAB+
In most of Australia there is only 8 DAB+ transmission channels and for high power transmitters, there must be a spacing of at least 336 km to prevent interference on the same channel. The coverage area is lucky to be 100 km radius.
FM coverage area is of similar areas for high powered transmitters but many country ones are of much lower power thus reducing their coverage area.
DRM on the other hand uses lower frequencies and so can cover much larger areas even the whole of Australia from one transmitter and is ideal for regional and remote areas. There are hundreds of channels available.
The DAB+ and the DRM receivers are very similar except for the tuning of the station, however nearly all DAB+ receivers can only show a line of scrolling text where as all DRM receivers have a much larger colour screen for pictures and Journaline text. DAB+ could do this too, but broadcasters and importers are not supporting it in a meaningful way.
Lastly with all the fires, DRM/DAB+ can wake a radio from standby, increase the volume, make a siren sound and speak warning messages. In addition show a map of the emergency area and an indexed multipage display of detailed text instructions. The Emergency warning can be sent to all radios but only those in the specified area will respond, the other keep on with normal programs. Some of this was trialed in Darwin by Grant Broadcasters, but that's as far as it went. It is not much use without the decent sized screen. This is particularly useful, when the mobile phone tower which are usually on the tops of hills and their power line is burnt down, phones don't work, which is also true of Wireless NBN in rural areas so there is no communications left except radio, provided the populations still owns one.