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Joan,
I will address each of your points,
1) "Sunshine Coast licence areas are weak and patchy. The signal strength is generally too low to provide in-building reception."
At its present power, I know people in Pelican Waters who receive Brisbane DAB on portable receivers (a suburb slightly south of Caloundra which not elevated.)
with a power increase and the notch removed, in building reception in Most of Caloundra will be reality.
2) "The coverage in the Sunshine Coast LAP is also very poor, with only patches of coverage, mainly on higher ground and in the overlap area around Caboolture which both the Brisbane and Sunshine Coast broadcasters are entitled to cover. "
I do agree, the coverage around MOST of the LAP is poor.. however the parts that are being questioned is the Caloundra Turn off to Brisbane.
This area is home to the new Aura development which will have 40,000 homes in the next 7-10 years. Also the area from Caloundra to Caboolture is one of the highest areas for growth in Queensland.
It is expected that most of these people will do the daily commute on the Bruce highway to Brisbane.
I have driven that with a glass mount antenna and with the current Brisbane DAB+ signal is 95% rock solid
At the Caloundra Turn off.. Brisbane Stations are 40KM past their LAP boundary!... ill say again 40KM!
3) "Brisbane broadcasters are not engaging in any sort of land grab."
It may not be a land grab today but certainly will end up that way in the future!
4) "They have an obligation to fully cover their licence area which with the current restrictions is not possible."
yes they do... however with areas like Cleveland and Thornlands unable to get in building reception and thats 100% in their LAP wouldnt it be better to improve that area then worry about the boundary of the LAP?
5) "The good news is that ACMA is undertaking its channel allotment for Queensland, which will address how to improve coverage in Brisbane"
No matter how you juggle it, there is simply not enough channels!
The current ACMA modelling is the best it can be.. All a change of that will achieve is move the interference from one area to another.
Solution:
The solution for the gold and sunshine coast is easy, however it wont solve the issue for the industry as a whole.
1) Bring the Mt Mee on channel repeater up to full power (820 watts ERP) instead of its current 50 watts and use directional antennas to cover northern Brisbane and Caboolture.
2) Lower the power going South from Mt Cootha, Consider a Southern on channel repeater such as Mt cotton, this would also fix the poor coverage in parts of the redlands.
There are currently 5 on channel repeaters in Sydney, 12 in Melbourne, 2 in perth and they seem to work well and have been used to solve coverage issues there so why not use them more effectively in Brisbane?
The solution as a whole was suggested by ACMA to consider either DAB market amalgamations or use of other technology such as DRM+, However both suggestions were "poo poo'd" by CRA.
While we all agree DAB market amalgamations is a bad idea, considering DRM+ is worth the industry looking at it.
DRM+ is a more resilient, is being continually developed and improved, can have audio quality then DAB+ by the use of Opus Codec (DAB+ has no support of opus and no plans to implement it), would give broadcasters comparable audio bandwidth, would mean broadcasters run their own show without the need for joint venture companies and most important of all, due to the channel spacing being smaller means that ACMA can slot everybody more effectively.
The industry would no doubt welcome a holistic comparsion of DRM+ verus DAB+ in regional areas put forward by CRA.. however I cannot see CRA doing this. I know the thought has been not to fragment the market however in this modern day of software defined radios, most radios would only require different firmware to receive both DRM+ and DAB+ and as far as the listener is concerned, they wouldn't have a clue as long as there is music coming out the speakers without breakup.
We can stick our heads in the sand and think that DAB+ will work properly in regional areas.. but reality is... it simply wont work.