Comment from Peter Saxon –
Keen radioinfo readers may recall that we’d spent little time mourning the death of our dedicated bathroom radio.
When it finally shuffled off its electrified mortal coil, a couple of years ago, instead of buying a new one, I promptly replaced it with stuff that we had lying around the house, so to speak. Its successor was comprised of an iPhone equipped with the RadioApp manacled via Bluetooth to a UE (not 2UE but Ultimate Ears) Boom speaker gifted us by iHeart at a long-forgotten promotion.
Worst decision I ever made – apart from taking up smoking at 14… and not buying Bitcoin when it was four dollars .
Nothing has made the case for retaining AM and FM radio better than last week’s OPTUS outage.
We woke up totally disconnected from the outside world. This, despite having more radio options in the house than ever. Between us we have two smart phones, an iPad two smart TVs and two computers. None of them worked. Whatever your morning habit, be it news, music, chat, traffic, weather or your favourite personalities. Not a sound, not a picture, not a tweet or an X, a Tic or a Toc, a call or a text. Nothing. With a newly installed FTTP NBN and a 4G back up, the mighty OPTUS modem, starved of signal, was powerless to provide our morning fix.
It was a truly eerie feeling as we realised how addicted we’d become, utterly reliant on digital technology.
Just as we were beginning to feel that all was lost, we got in the car and to our great relief, the radio came on with the ignition – not that digital stuff streamed through CarPlay or Android Auto, it was the real honest to goodness classic AM radio that your grandad would listen to through his Astor Diamond Dot (Pics from Australian Vintage Radio) . I don’t think we’d ever been so overjoyed at hearing Ray Hadley’s voice as we were last Wednesday morning.
Before then, we were beginning to feel somewhat anxious about the situation. Was it just our house, the whole street, suburb Australia or just Optus? Was it a cyber attack? Had WWIII started or simply a cable severed at a building site. We had no idea until we got to a radio and a human that could tell us what was happening in real time.
As the day wore on, and the pieces of the ‘cause and affect’ puzzle were put in place, all of us, whether Optus customers or not, began to realise how vulnerable this brave new world of technology can be when it is so centralised and we rely so heavily on it for everything from banking to hospitals to emergency services, public transport and almost anything you can think of.
Pauline’s late model Renault has a state of the art infotainment system but has, happily, retained its AM and FM capabilities. The events of last Wednesday should put to rest any further debate about whether terrestrial radio has a place on the modern dashboard or in your home. It is an absolute necessity!
Peter Saxon – Managing Editor
Nicely said. Terrestrial-delivered Community Television was killed on the basis that "internet delivery offered at least as good a distribution model". Bull. It wasn't true then, and country phone delivery is barely better now so nothing has improved. And, as we've seen, when Optus went out: half the population had no network and no way to find out why we had no network... other than turning on radio news. Next they will tell us that AM can be replaced with the interweb. Clearly that's garbage also. So thank you Optus for the valuable lesson, and isn't it a good thing that I kept my crystal set.
A few remarks,
* Whether or not we are customers of Optus, we may well be interacting with friends, loved ones, businesses and government entities who are connected to the Optus system.
We are owed an explanation as to the causes of the telephone, mobile and internet services to fail simultaneously and the measures taken to ensure the unlikelihood of a recurrence.
A similar event ocurred with another provider in 2012.
http://www.vodafail.com/
They appear to have remedied their problem since. This was confirmed by news during the weekend of the 11th and 12th November 2023 of Optus customers rocking up to to shopping centres to purchase plans at Vodafone and Telstra shops.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/major-optus-outage-affects-millions-of-customers-20231108-p5eics.html
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/08/optus-network-outage-free-wifi-customers-gathering-regional-shops
* The impact of the outage affected the way we transacted electronically payment to businesses for goods and services. Having cash was handy.
* Similarly a radio receiver is handy for receiving the same IP-delivered when the IP service is unavailable.
I cannot understand why we are dependent on an IP service to listen to radio stations in the customer's licence area if the radio signal is strong and not subject to interference.
It is harder to use your fingers to push a preset or twiddling the dial than expending energy on the vocal chords saying "...hey Alexa tune in to 2GB..."?
Listening to FTA radio via IP may be worthwhile if the radio station is outside the customer's licence area and is impossible to receive especially those stations located overseas or not broadcasting terrestrially.
At the same time depending on your data plan, an hour of spoken word programming such as TNT Live is 80MB per hour or 1.9GB per day or 13.4GB per week or 53GB per month or 645GB per year.
Then there are streaming video services consuming considerably more data.
These video services may not be available on terrestrial or satellite whether FTA or subscription such as YouTube and Netflix.
In conclusion, we have to question how we consume our entertainment and information and whether it is more economical to resort to terrestrial radios when applicable.
Thank you
Anthony, I like my terrestrial radio and using low bandwidth video on a mobile phone, Strathfield South, in the land of the Wangal and Darug Peoples of the Eora Nation
Overjoyed at hearing Ray Hadley’s voice? If that's the only advantage of terrestrial radio, I'll stick to streaming, thanks.
It is not only the lack of Optus, Telstra or Vodaphone it is also the lack of the NBN.
During the 2019 - 2020 bushfires the ACMA reported that 1,394 mobile phone base stations went off the air. The problem with mobile phones is two fold:
1. They are usually at the highest location in their area for maximum coverage which makes them vulnerable not only to wind, and lightning, but also fire because hot air rises. In addition, they are fed with power lines which get burnt down. They are usually battery backed up for a few hours.
2. The ABC and emergency services recommend going to their app which uses the mobile phone transmitter/receiver, one per user. When the base station is needed most, it can run out of transmission channels leaving those in danger unable to get 000.
Not only mobile phone base stations but also the NBN which makes no guarantees about electricity backup, for those using landline phones and broadband, Fibre To The Node, uses green grey boxs on the verge in many streets. This is only backed up for a few hours. If blackouts are widespread, both mobiles and land line phones stop working. This also stops smart speakers as well as phones.
Mobile phone base stations generally have a coverage radius of 10s of km.
Compare this to broadcast radio. Most large transmitter sites not only have emergency electricity generators but often have backup transmitters as well.
Radio should push the purchase of digital radios which can receive emergency announcements, images such as maps, detailed indexed (for multiple simultaneous emergencies) text instructions (not the single scrolling line of text) and also can send the location of police roadblocks to vehicle navigation systems to re-route the driver away from danger. 80 % of new cars have DAB+ and some have no AM, although DAB+ has been simulcasting existing broadcasts since 2009.
DAB+ is unsuitable for country areas because of its reduced range. Digital Radio Mondiale can cover local areas to the whole of Australia with no black spots. The centre of Australia is away from weather events and military threats and is the ideal location for a national broadcast of news and sport live and emergency warnings mentioned above. The emergency warning announcements can be restricted to radios in the area of the emergency.
There were few complaints in 2010 - 2013 when TV went digital due to a planned switch off of analog, radio should do the same. This will drive receiver prices back down to realistic levels rather than the current inflated prices due to low volume sales.