News

The continuing progress of digital radio, specifically DAB+, and the deployment of hybrid radio within cars/trucks to retain radio’s share of the vital mobile market are priorities for Edita Kudláčová.

BG Radio, a Bulgarian radio station playing Bulgarian pop music, is now available to listeners on DAB+ in a large part of the Netherlands.

ABU DBS 2021 featured a session on Technologies and Strategies for Successful Digital Radio Rollout. Dr Les Sabel, Chair, WorldDAB Asia Pacific Technical Group, highlighted the need to have DAB+ as the heart of hybrid radio, which can help extract metadata and deliver it to the receiver at a small incremental cost.

The growth of DAB+ in France continues to accelerate, and 75% of the greater Paris region is now covered with DAB+ reception. Starting from 31 May, a series of activities across the country will celebrate radio and DAB+ as part of the "Fête de la radio" event.

WorldDAB and RadioDNS jointly organise automotive workshops three times a year. These roundtable meetings discuss a mixture of current implementation issues, and identify gaps in functionality that could be easily closed.

The nationwide DAB+ offering in Germany continues to grow with the launch of three stations - herFunk/Radio Eva and Sportradio Deutschland will launch on 1 May, while dpd Driver's Radio will also launch in the near future.

Jazz Radio, Melody, Oüi FM, Radio FG, Radio Notre Dame, Radio Nova, Sud Radio et TSF Jazz are now available to listeners on DAB+ digital radio in the greater Paris region.

Digitalradio Deutschland has launched an exciting spring DAB+ receiver promotion campaign. Every day between 6 - 17 April participants have the chance to win one of the latest DAB+ radios available in the shops.

WorldDAB was the major sponsor of this year's ABU DBS and hosted a DAB+ workshop on Tuesday 6 April. Topics covered: DAB+ in the APAC region (Joan Warner, CRA); global update and why broadcasters are rolling out DAB+ (Patrick Hannon, President WorldDAB); DAB+ standards update (Lindsay Cornell, BBC), DAB+ receivers in cars (Ron Schiffelers, NXP); consumer receivers (Albert Tseng, Keystone Semiconductors), and update on the activities of the WorldDAB Asia Pacific Technical Group (Les Sabel, SComm). Presentations from the workshop are available to download from the WorldDAB website.

In the last couple of years, DAB head-end systems have undergone many improvements. Today, most systems are connected to the internet, so security is in focus. Systems are also more user-friendly with a focus on redundancy and simplification, says Paneda's Lars-Peder Lundgren.