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Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Local Norway: Norway on Wednesday completed its transition to digital radio, becoming the first country in the world to shut down national broadcasts of its FM radio network despite some grumblings. As scheduled, the country's most northern regions and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic switched to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) in the late morning, said Digitalradio Norge (DRN) which groups Norway's public and commercial radio. The transition, which began on January 11th, allows for better sound quality, a greater number of channels and more functions, all at a cost eight times lower than FM radio, according to authorities. The move has however been met with some criticism linked to technical incidents and claims that there is not sufficient DAB coverage across the country. In addition, radio users have complained about the cost of having to buy new receivers or adapters, usually priced around 100 to 200 euros. Currently, fewer than half of motorists (49 percent) are able to listen to DAB in their cars, according to DRN figures. According to a study cited by local media, the share of Norwegians who listen to the radio on a daily basis has dropped by 10 percent in one year, and public broadcaster NRK has lost 21 percent of its audience.
Some car audio systems are extremely integrated into the vehicle. They may be stuck with a nonfunctional radio for years.
I know people who are still complaining about the digital TV transition here in the US, because they used to be able to get a weak signal with analog, and now they get nothing. Sounds like Norway is having the same problem.
They should have transitioned this over ten years like digital TV in the US.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
DAB has worse battery life than FM, a shorter reception range for the same TX power, and often (depending on bit rate and codec) poorer audio quality. No one was asking for it, its purely politicians grandstanding and looking like they have their finger on the pulse of technology. Also the FM band being 30Mhz wide - less bandwidth than a modern ethernet cable - isn absoltely not use for modern data comms so it can't even be sold off for that to raise money.
I suspect all that will happen is legal broadcasters lose listeners hand over fist especially in car, and pirate radio takes over the FM band.
allows for better sound quality
By better sound quality, do they mean the signal isn't compressed six ways to Tuesday so music sounds tinny, weak and as if it's coming through a wire a raccoon is chewing on?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Hmm...do we have DAB in the US?
This is actually pretty much the first I've heard of this...
Intentional pun?
Well, even in Norway, where they do have it . . . it seems that a lot of folks will not hear it either. Too bad that a lot of cars won't get traffic reports any more.
Digital radio suffers a big drawback. Unlsee the received signal is pretty much perfect, you are greeted with very high fidelity silence. It's called the Digital cliff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
An analog FM signal slowly fades over distance. A digital radio signal is fine one moment, than nothing, and the nothing happens at a much closer range. As well, there is no advantage bandwidth wise.
Unfortunately, as soon as most people hear "digital something", they immediately assume it is better. Not always. So Norway has switched to a radio system with less coverage.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Let me introduce you to my little friend the Shannon–Hartley theorem. This is information theory's corollary to the 2nd law of thermodynamics".
Channel capacity = bandwidth * log2 (1+S/N).
Simply put, more data means vastly reduced range. And in this house we obey the 2nd law of thermodynamics".
“The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
Sir Arthur Eddington (The Nature of the Physical World, 1915)