Norway Will Switch Off FM Radio In 2017

New submitter titten writes The Norwegian Ministry of Culture has announced that the transition to DAB will be completed in 2017. This means that Norway, as the first country in the world to do so, has decided to switch off the FM network. Norway began the transition to DAB in 1995. In recent years two national and several local DAB-networks has been established. 56 per cent of radio listeners use digital radio every day. 55 per cent of households have at least one DAB radio, according to Digitalradio survey by TNS Gallup, continuously measuring the Norwegian`s digital radio habits.

Comments

About half

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words they're going to cause problems for nearly half the households?

Re:About half

[kimvette]

Even bigger problem is cars where you cannot replace the head unit without disrupting the CAN bus or losing some functionality (like turn indicator reminders, warning tones, etc.)

Re:About half

[kyrsjo]

Rather the opposite - nice cars (or anything newer than 10-15 years) has integrated headunits, which is basically what kimvette says. On old/simple cars, the radio was just a radio, sitting in a DIN socket.

However, there are aftermarket solutions, some nicer than other. And of course, the nice solutions are krkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkr...

Re:About half

[Kjella]

Ooh, found my answer, "20 % of private cars are equipped with DAB radio." So 80% aren't. I think 80% of people are going to not like this once it happens.

That doesn't even begin to cover it, many people have an FM radio that they occasionally use for example at cabins or whatever, more than 80% will probably have to replace some radio. And note that they asked for "digital listeners" not "DAB listeners" meaning if you use your smartphone or tablet or PC to listen to radio, you get counted in favor of DAB even though you don't use DAB.

Actually this (Norwegian) is the truth, in 2014 about 64% of the population listened to radio daily and only 19% on DAB. There's no numbers for it but even less exclusively used DAB. I don't have a DAB radio. It sucks for any kind of battery-driven device, meaning just the kind of remote places and mobile appliances where you'd want radio. We'd do better just upgrading so we'd get 3G/4G coverage everywhere rather than DAB.

Nobody else is phasing out FM or even planning to phase out FM. This is just Norway going off on its own crusade urged on by commercial interests of 10+ new channels, fuck whether it makes sense to throw out millions of radios. On the bright side, I expect this to lead to a massive interest in building out 3G/4G coverage as ex-FMers give DAB the middle finger. Streaming with Spotify + offline playlists is likely to be the new "radio".

Re:About half

[ultranova]

Meh. Didn't we hear the same argument when color TV was introduced? Or CDs, Digital TV, Digital cameras, Fly by wire, the Internet etc etc every other technology implementation ever?

Cassettes and analog cameras weren't banned. They simply fell out of favor because CDs and digital cameras were way superior as far as the end user was concerned. By contrast, digital tv and digital radio don't benefit the end user, they'll simply let parts of the spectrum be auctioned off; so they require legislation to force the end users to pay the costs for the transition so someone else can profit.

Perfect time

[ArchieBunker]

For pirate FM stations to fly their flags.

DAB or DAB+?

[Rising Ape]

I find here in the UK the DAB stations often sound worse than their FM equivalents, thanks to an antiquated codec (MP2!). DAB+ was supposed to fix this by using AAC+, but that doesn't seem to have been deployed here. Backwards compatibility issues I guess.

Re:DAB or DAB+?

[brambus]

I think many stations in the UK are using MP2 at 128kbps for stereo, which is just atrocious. MP2 should definitely not be used below 192kbps, in which case it'll definitely be better than even FM using 100kHz spacing.

Less accessible

[sevenisloud]

One of the things about FM radio is it's so easily accessible - you can (in the UK at least) buy a rubbish FM radio from a pound shop - it might not be great of course, but it makes it a medium practically everyone can enjoy. DAB is comparatively quite expensive.

So much for long distance Listening

[FlyingGuy]

Digital ANYTHING over the air for listening just plain sucks.

If your signal is not perfect you simply don't hear anything. If I am WAY away from an analog broadcast, it might be fuzzy, it might in and out of stereo but I can still HEAR and understand it. With digital, one the signal gets fuzzy is just does not decode it.

This is only one of the reasons why cops and fire fighters hate the new digital radios.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Anonymous Coward]

This effect is called "digital cliff". In theory, digitally encoded information (in this case, sound we want to hear) does not suffer the quality degradation no matter that there is actual degradation in signal. Until signal quality becomes so horrible that is not possible to get encoded information from the signal. With analog modulation, you would get more noise in information when you get more noise in signal. Illustrated as: http://www.aerialsandtv.com/_wp_generated/wpea5bfb21_01_1a.jpg In practice this works ok for digital television. You get best possible* image with DTV where you would get unwatchable static-covered picture.

The problem here is that digitalization is often used to decrease the power of the emitter, so you cannot compare digital and analog case directly.

Honestly, I don't have an idea if this works well with sound. Sound is rarely distorted in analog TV, even when video itself is completely ruined. And this depends heavily on modulation and encoding.

*) As much as MPEG2 and MPEG4 can give you

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[dryeo]

You get best possible* image with DTV where you would get unwatchable static-covered picture.

The problem with the switch to digital TV was all the channels moved into the UHF band which does not carry as far. Here I used to get ch. 2 and 6 clear and a couple of other ones were sometimes watchable, after the switch to digital we don't get any channels. Being 30 miles outside of one of the biggest cities in Canada means no other options, satellite blocked by hills and trees, no cable, no cell coverage and with the privatized phone system 3 9's means that every 9 days the phone is out for 9 hours (18 hours last time), usually due to cable theft.
FM radio is still good but I'm sure if it switched to digital that would also be gone. This raises the question about Norway and how good the DAB coverage is compared to FM

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Paradise Pete]

Used to be a thunderstorm just meant a fussy TV.

Used to be a fussy TV no matter the weather. And a pair of pliers to change the channel because the crappy plastic knob fell off.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Kjella]

TETRA or P25 on a power for power basis with older analogue equipment works well over 3 times the distance where analogue becomes unintelligible.

Outside. I know particularly the firefighters have complained about poorer coverage inside buildings, which is usually where their life-saving work is done. Details...

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[Z00L00K]

AM is only used in a few areas in central Europe like Germany and France, but it's a dead end in Europe.

Re:So much for long distance Listening

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It also doesn't help that digital transitions are when broadcasters usually give in to the temptation to squeeze in a bunch of extra channels. When they get really greedy, the results are so bandwidth starved that they sound like horribly compressed crap(because they are) even under ideal circumstances. Even if they don't push it that hard, they haven't typically been very conservative about building in a lot of margin for degradation.

Just like TV this will bite the big one

[Anonymous Coward]

When analog tv went away, the signals got very weak and undependable.

FM will do the same there

Re:not in the usa

[Jack Griffin]

Yeah but neither did the metric system, public health or regulation of dangerous weapons. The US is hardly the benchmark for what is considered a good idea or not.

Not Applicable to North America

[Freshly Exhumed]

The DAB radio system was not adopted in the U.S.A. or Canada. The Canadian authorities permitted testing of DAB for quite awhile but eventually allowed it to die off due to lack of interest.

Instead, the iBiquity HDRadio IBOC standard was adopted in North America, which is a hybrid digital/analogue system that retains the traditional FM Radio band. While DAB and FM Radio occupy different parts of the spectrum, in North America you can think of digital radio as being a "superset" of the traditional analogue stations in the same band (IBOC means "In Band, On Channel).

So, a tuner with HDRadio capability and an old analogue FM tuner will both tune in the exact same station, but the former will process the digital portion of the station's signal in all its superior quality.

For broadcasters, the iBiquity HDRadio IBOC system can also be switched to 100% digital someday, but it is not likely to happen for a very long time if ever due to all the legacy analogue FM radios out there even in brand new consumer electronic gear. The automakers have come onboard with HDRadio-equipped tuners for the North American market.