News

Virgin Radio Switzerland went live two new stations on Wednesday - the Virgin Radio Hits Switzerland and Virgin Radio Rock Switzerland on DAB+.

The Greek National Telecommunications and Post Commission have announced a formal tender process on the direct award of a study to determine the starting price for the rights of use of radio frequencies of free-to-air digital broadcasters.

Various Flemish commercial radio stations will soon be better received via DAB+. Zener operator Norkring has started rolling out phase 3, with the number of sending locations doubling to 10.

The public and private radio broadcasters as well as those responsible for Digital Radio Norway draw a positive balance after switching from FM to DAB+, with large range gains made in program offers that did not previously exist on FM, reports the Norwegian Communications Authority in its latest survey.

Norkring has today put a new support transmitter for its commercial DAB+ into use in Flanders. Today a support channel in Ghent has been taken into use by the operator for the DAB+ package on channel 11A. The new support channel in Ghent is part of an expansion of the existing DAB+ network with five new support transmitters.

The DAB+ pilot project of the LFS Landesfunk Sachsen GmbH (Radio R.SA) on the MDR-Multiplex Sachsen will be extended beyond 14 February 2018. This was decided by the Media Council of the Saxon State Institute for Private Broadcasting and New Media (SLM) at its meeting on 15 January 2018. The decision was preceded by the desire of the radio broadcaster to continue the successful project.

BBC Surrey, Sussex, Humberside, Kent, Lincolnshire, Nottingham and Wiltshire will turn off their medium wave transmitters altogether, whilst partial closures all affect BBC Radio Devon, Essex and Humberside. Kieran Clifton, Director, BBC Distribution & Business Development said: “We conducted detailed assessments of the coverage of each BBC local radio station on FM, MW and DAB. Following this process, we trialled the switch-off of a number of medium-wave."

National diversity has grown from five to 31 stations. The expansion of the network is outstanding: the public-law programs now reach 99.7 percent of the population, the private provider 92.8. The mobile DAB+ network is better developed than the former VHF network, confirms the Norwegian Communications Authority. Today, 86 percent of the population use digital distribution channels, and the vast majority of over 78 percent hear radio every day via DAB+, Digital Radio Norway reports.

National Broadcasting Council of Poland's Krystyna Kuhn: In 2013 Poland had just started its DAB journey, so joining WorldDAB allowed us to meet countries with much more experience that we could learn from, such as the UK and Norway. We hoped to find good examples of solutions to the challenges we met on these first steps.

In 2018, the Scandinavian countries will be the guests of honour of this three-day show, and its radio professionals will be in the spotlight. DENMARK, SWEDEN, FINLAND and NORWAY (which have just switched off FM permanently) will be the four guests of honour of this new edition, which will have an even greater international dimension than ever.