Digital Radio Wobbles Around the World [link to this story]

Last month, I attended an exploratory workshop hosted by the European
Science Foundation about the prospects of community media in a
digitally-convergent communications environment. Not surprisingly,
when one thinks "community media," radio first comes to mind, and we
represented in full: most of the 30 invitees to this workshop were
either involved in radio activism and/or regulation in their
respective home countries.

My personal mission was to warn as many other countries away from
casting their fates with iBiquity's HD Radio platform, as it not only
carries a plethora of technical risks, but it may decimate community
radio stations as we know them (draft, not for publication).
Fortunately, this was an easy job: the Europeans can see through the
snake-oil that is HD Radio, and the general consensus of the workshop
was that HD should be opposed at every step.

However, this is not stopping iBiquity from trying to break into
international markets: the company's received permission from the
Mexican government to deploy HD-capable transmitters along the U.S.
border (essentially for those Mexican stations that actually serve
U.S. listeners); "experimental" FM-HD transmitters have been installed
in France and The Philippines; and other countries, such as Germany
and Switzerland, have actually conducted in-depth field tests of the
HD Radio protocol. This even though some of these countries have
already adopted digital radio transition plans, all of which use a
much different digital transmission protocol than iBiquity's
proprietary system.

So why is HD seeing the light of day overseas? There are a few major
reasons. The first is that many countries, such as the newest (and
aspiring) members of the European Union, like Slovenia and Macedonia,
do not yet have formal digital radio transition policies in effect.
iBiquity sees these as ripe markets, where the "no-pain, some-gain"
mantra of HD's biggest selling-point may sway the less-informed.

Secondly, iBiquity may attempt to leverage international trade law
(which has been primarily to reflect U.S. interests) in order to force
countries to consider and/or adopt the HD standard as part of the
benefits of globalization. The decision on whether or not a country
adopts a new digital broadcast standard is made essentially by
government fiat. iBiquity, I believe, hopes to get its foot in the
door in other countries in order to turn to those nations which have
not yet committed to a digital radio transition and say, "Hey, you
can't exclude our standard from consideration. If you do, we'll
consider your transition-plan a violation of international 'free-
trade' laws (presumably suggesting that the selection of a feasible,
non-HD DAB infrastructure would constitute some sort of illegal
'government subsidy') and haul your ass in front of the World Trade
Organization for damages."

Such a threat may be enough to entice developing countries to at least
give iBiquity a hearing; it is certainly a possible way for iBiquity
to raise the funds it desperately needs to stay in business, even if
it doesn't further the technology's adoption. And it most definitely
may be a tactic U.S. trade negotiators could consider: iBiquity is a
wholly-owned U.S. corporate interest, and what's good for U.S.
business is good for the country, after all.

But perhaps the most important thing I learned at the Budapest
workshop is that many established countries, which settled upon
digital radio transition plans many years before the U.S. did, are now
rethinking their own initiatives. The problem is not inherent to any
specific technology; it's due to the fact that no digital radio
protocol exists which does things that citizen-consumers see as
important enough to upgrade their receivers for. Although most "first-
world" nations have already committed to a non-HD DAB rollout, many of
them are finding it a tough go: DAB-compatible receiver sales are
flat, and those who operate the DAB transmission networks in these
countries are not providing a diversity and quality of programming
which sets DAB apart from traditional analog radio services to entice
listenership.

For example, many countries are reconsidering their entire DAB
strategies; Germany, for one, has decided to abandon its original DAB
technological platform and is now openly considering alternatives. And
although HD is but one of several alternative DAB technologies now
available, they all suffer from a common flaw.

That flaw is relatively simple: no digital radio technology has proven
itself to be a worthy replacement to analog radio service. Every DAB
proponent has promised increased program diversity and higher audio
fidelity; these are promises that have not been fully borne out in
practice. Every DAB transmission protocol has run into some real-world
technical difficulties which inhibit its quality of service. In
addition, digital-capable receivers remain much more expensive than
analog-only models. And the promises of "new uses for radio," such as
datacasting, are not catching fire as DAB proponents had hoped.

This raises two very important questions: is radio even ready to go
digital? If so, what is the compelling reason? Broadcasters look at
developments such as wireless broadband access, satellite radio, and
portable music devices as the killers of their present business-
models. If people can receive a larger range of more compelling audio
content from services and devices other than their local radio
stations, then what value do those stations actually have? And if
radio stations begin to devote their spectral allocation to the
provision of services other than freely-available audio content, have
they forfeited their primary reason for being?

It's quite a conundrum. If radio stations go digital, do they stick
with being audio providers, or do they branch out into the provision
of other services? And if they choose the latter, should we still call
them radio stations? In this context, radio's digitalization calls the
entire medium's identity into question. And this is a global
phenomenon, irrespective of the DAB technology at hand.

The ESF workshop organizers will be publishing a "scientific report"
on our findings within the next month or so. It should make for
interesting reading.

http://diymedia.net/archive/0608.htm#062308

Links in the article well-worth clicking on!