After a Decade, Digital Radio Still an Also-Ran In UK

beschra writes "Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) was developed as early as 1981. After launching in the UK 10 years ago, only 24% of listeners listen on DAB. The article credits a good part of the delay to the fact that the technology was largely developed under the Europe-wide Eureka 147 research project. How does government vs. commercial development help or hinder acceptance of new technology? From the article: '"If Nokia develops something, they'll be bringing out the handsets before you know it," [analyst Grant Goddard says]. "Because DAB was a pan-European development, you had to have agreement from all sides before you could do anything. That meant progress was extremely slow." But this alone did not account for the hold-up. The sheer complexity of introducing and regulating the system was also a major factor, Mr. Goddard adds."'

Comments

Re:Hmm, I wonder

[amorsen]

And also that FM is more tolerant of bad reception.

If DAB was blasted out at typical FM powers, you wouldn't have bad reception. Not that I'm in any way supporting DAB, but FM is just obsolete.