News

Two transmitters have been switched on in North-West Wales giving 100,000 people access to digital radio stations. The switch-on, during a ceremony in Caernarfon today, means six stations will be available in the area for the first time only on DAB.

As part of an emergency exercise in the district of Bayreuth, Digital Radio "Emergency Warning Functionality" (EWF) has been successfully subjected to its first practical test. The Emergency Warning Functionality test is currently developed and promoted by Fraunhofer IIS, NOXON mbH, TMT GmbH & Co.KG and Bayern Digital Radio GmbH.

The ECODyNIS have reported the successful completion of improvements that have been made to car navigation in urban areas of Germany which will provide traffic information via digital radio.

According the 2014 International Communications Market Report report from Ofcom, almost half of UK adults claim to own a DAB digital radio with sales of DAB receivers now accounting for a third of all radio sets sold. The full report is available for download.

Listeners in parts of North West Wales will be able to receive six additional stations on DAB digital radio from 12th December. The launch is the latest part of the Government and radio industry's bid to boost local DAB coverage across all parts of the UK. A new multiplex covering parts of North Yorkshire is expected to go live next week.

Five new organisations have now joined the "Alliance for Digital Radio" initiative to support the deployment of digital radio in France. Crooner Radio, Radio Raje, Trace FM and receiver manufacturers Pure and CGV join SIRTI, SNRL and WorldDMB to drive the successful deployment of digital radio in France. The Alliance for Digital Radio was formed in October to coordinate activities related to the promotion of a rapid launch of digital radio at the national level, and aimed at the regulator (CSA), government departments, industry partners,retailers and editors. They plan also to inform the public about the advantages offered by digital radio.

From 2015, ORF will pilot youth radio station FM21 via digital radio in eastern Austria in coordination with the Media Authority.

Global, the media & entertainment group, has today announced it will take significant capacity on the DAB digital radio D1 national multiplex, launching a host of new national digital stations over the next year. Global also continues to innovate, leading the industry with the new DAB “service following” initiative. This will facilitate seamless listening as people drive between local multiplexes, without a break in service and without drivers having to manually retune from one station or multiplex, to another. Service following is currently in final testing and launches on the vast majority of local DAB multiplexes in early 2015.

We didn’t realise that there was a View Quest Retro Mini DAB+/FM radio with bluetooth. Well, we do now. It’s a cute little retro radio too, the kind of thing that would do the job in a kitchen or smaller bedroom. Choose from a multitude of colours, each with DAB+ and FM radio functionality, the option to use as a bluetooth speaker, a 5w speaker, alarms, sleep function and USB connectivity.

A host of new digital stations are set to launch in the new year by Global, including a sister-station for Heart. Heart Extra will launch on Digital One, the national DAB multiplex, where Global says it has done a deal for extra ‘significant’ capacity.