The BBC has called for the Government to get involved with extending DAB coverage as well as putting pressure on car manufacturers to put digital radios in their cars.
DAB switchover was targeted for 2015 in Lord Carter's recent Digital Britain report.
Talking at the Priorities for Digital Britain conference in Westminester, BBC Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thompson, said "we will not do the analogue switch off unless there are some very big thresholds met, especially [concerning] car radios. And those are challenging thresholds."
DAB coverage is around 90 per cent currently, but estimates hover around the £100 million mark to roll out digital to the final 10 per cent of the UK that doesn't yet have coverage.
"The final 10 per cent, we need to discuss with the Government," continued Thompson.
Andrew Harrison, chief executive of the Radio Centre, the commercial radio trade organisation, also spoke yesterday. He painted a bleak picture of the commercial radio industry, saying that 80 per cent of local radio stations are either loss making or break even and that it was hard for commercial stations to make money on DAB.
Harrision also criticised the huge amount of regulation increasing costs for local radio.
"We welcome the report for the policy it outlines," said Harrision. "But we need these reforms now, they're critical to the survival of radio [including the] deregulation of cross-media ownership. This is the last opportunity to carve out a long [and] profitable future for radio in our digital economy."
Later switchover will cost more
An important piece of the switchover puzzle is making sure car radios will support DAB and Ford and Vauxhall have committed to making this happen by 2013.
Thompson made the point that having both DAB and FM switched on will cost the BBC more and the corporation was keen to do what it can to switch over as soon as possible. "Switchover in 2020 costs us more than a switchover in 2015." The BBC's director of audio and music, Tim Davie, was recently quoted in Media Guardian as saying that switchover so soon is a challenge.
"At the moment you can only buy a DAB set for £50-plus. We are never going to get switchover by 2015 unless we really focus minds. I said on current trends it won't happen in our lifetime, and I meant it," said Davie, speaking at the Radio Festival in Nottingham at the end of June.
"2015 helps us make it a reality. Will we make that date? I think that's ambitious. A decent DAB radio has to cost £15, not £50."
Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
richardprizeman
March 22nd 2010
5. This is the worse news ever. DAB is inferer quality to FM, The stations are so compressed that Radio 4 goes into MONO when five live extra broadcasts, this is the most short sighted thing the Government have ever done. Stations broadcast at 128Kilobits which is less quality than a CD and is on a par with MP3. If more space is needed for mobile phones it would make more sense to sell of the DAB network, even the BBC are cutting back on DAB with the axing of 6 Music and the Asian network. Many people including myself have many FM radio's the main one I have is a Naim tuner which cost £800, to say I am furious is an understatement. This is another bulling Government just like making everyone using energy saving light bulbs. Oh DAB sets use twice the power.
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bradman
July 14th 2009
4. Holy cow, Raven. You need to visit http://www.apostrophe.org.uk/ before it's too late...
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lex
July 14th 2009
3. Raven, aside from your cavalier attitude to the poor old apostrophe, you're wrong about DAB+. No-one in the UK is using it yet, but it's more likely to be the standard adopted across Europe (in which case DAB+ radios will end up cheaper than UK-only DAB). It's also more efficient spectrally and offers higher quality at the same time, so we really should throw off the shackles of DAB while we still can.
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watcherzero
July 14th 2009
2. A dab set in an existing digital device wont eat power but on its own yes it will be more power hungry decoding the signal instead of just amplyfying it but circuits are a lot more power efficent nowadays too.
Sound quality is a problem, the capability is there for superior bitrate but the broadcasters arent taking it up instead preferring to cram in more low quality channels into the same bandwidth.
Your right people arent going to mass convert either, people are going to buy intially for 3 locations, car, kitchen and lounge then they will spread outward when devices like radio alarm clocks are replaced. But also remember that freeview digiboxes not that long ago were over £200 and now are around £29
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raven
July 13th 2009
1. I agree the cost of Dab radio's will be a big
problem, and sadly £50 is not going to buy one that's of any use. They keep changing the system, now you need a Dab+ set, all other
Dab set's are already dead Ducks!
A Dab+ set if you can fine one, will set you back close to £100 notes each, becouse bare in
mind most people are going to need a lot more than just one set! Many people have a radio in
almost every room, so you may need 5 or 6 at
least, And I for one am not going to spend 5 or 6 hundred pounds on Dab+ radio's that have
a far worse sound quality than good old FM, due to the very poor bit rate!
Let's also not forget that Dab set's eat's battery's, so will be expensive to run.
It seems strange that in this age when we are going all out to cut down power consumption with the like's of low engergy light bulbs & TV's, that they are pushing a system that uses more & delivers worse quality?
Sad to say it, but as things stand, when FM goes, I think that will spell the end of radio usage for many people, including me!
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