On Wednesday 29 June 2022 the ABC and the Australian network operator BAI hosted a demonstration of Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) on both AM and FM in Wangaratta, a location in the state of Victoria.
The demonstration was the culmination of almost two years of COVID impacted work to assess the performance of the DRM services on VHF and MF bands.
Senior representatives from the public, commercial and community stations, the regulator and interested parties including the ABC, SBS, CBAA, ARN, ACMA, TAB and ACE Radio, travelled to the regional sites to see the facility and more importantly to experience the audio quality available through the DRM signals on both the MF (AM) band from Wangaratta MF and the VHF (FM) band from Mt Baranduda.
The attendees visited the MF site at Wangaratta where a simulcast of the AM and DRM services was operating and were able to see the transmission equipment.
At the local Rovers Football club carpark, two vehicles were set up with receivers for stationary listening and demonstrations of the emergency warning capabilities to “wake-up” the radios.
The third part of the demonstration was drive tests for the attendees to demonstrate the audio quality on the move and the ability to switch between AM, FM and the two DRM signals.
Feedback from the attendees was universally positive.
With online streaming of audio to more flexible, multifunction devices such as smartphones having gained as much momentum as it has, I fear that attempting to launch DRM now would be much like attempting to make minidiscs and digital compact cassettes a commercially successful format just as MP3s, iPods and recordable CDs were starting to dominate the marketplace.
Two points, on the details of the report and the implementation of mobile services in rural areas.
First, there is no information on how the quality of the reception of the signal between the transmitters and receiver as well as the distance between the transmitters and receiver.
Second, while it is true that many people use apps to listen to broadcasts outside the technical and market boundaries of the licenced broadcaster, mobile networks may not have the same distance coverage as a DRM+ signal in the MW and SW band. Signals transmitted on the VHF and UHF band are line-of-sight and mobile telephone transmitters operate on less power than broadcast transmitters. Hence the limited coverage of mobile networks conveying data in rural areas. It may be acceptable to listen to radio broadcasts via a mobile phone apps in an urban environment as there are many cellular network towers.
So it may not be practical for the rural districts to use the mobile networks to relay broadcast, hence the use of broadcast transmitters not mobile phone transmitters.
But at the same time, look at this site and notice that the move is for rural stations to convert from AM and FM subject to engineering approval of the ACMA.
Thank you,
Anthony, of being pragmatic without legislative impetus, Belfield in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation.