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Many of us who keenly await the wider use of DAB+ look forward to what the digital radio planning committee for regional Australia comes up with.
Hopefully it won't result in delaying ACMA's administration of the legislation or result in unnecessary squeezes on spectrum.
I predict regional owners will delay DAB+ as they lobby for licence rebates and outright funding. Plenty of National Party seats to lobby for them.
Am not optimistic of DAB+ being on air for the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast but live in hope.
Will welcome the end DAB+ trial in Canberra as my many DAB+ radios only work in some parts of the house or on an external antenna as infill transmitters are needed in Tuggeranong. However getting into DAB+ costs 10's of thousands a year for broadcasters depending on the stream (64Kb's upwards), why it costs so much I don't understand as transmitter costs are saved by having several stations on one transmitter. For regional and community stations DRM for AM or DRM plus for FM would have been a much lower cost solution. DRM on AM would give better than the same wide coverage of present AM stations, which is why India chose it. In England there has been experiments with low cost DAB, will that come to DAB+ in Australia.
I cannot believe it has taken this long to get this little distance with DRB. I was with SBS Radio 20 years ago when we were seriously planning for the bright new future of multiplexing and national roll-out of digital programs. And we still don't have DRB beyond the capital cities! If this was medical research, half our kids would today still be dying of scarlet fever and bubonic plague. Telephones? We'd still be using bakelite handsets. I know there are all sorts of technical, financial and vested interest issues surrounding DRB, but it's only radio, for goodness sake. These issues should have been sorted long, long ago. The brave new world of driving round Australia with the car radio automatically retuning to the same station? A future where in Tea Gardens I can access the full digital suit of ABC and SBS national programs? They must be kidding us!