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Responding to high demand from listeners, the new DAB+ station Joe Lage Landen launched on 14 June. "We see that we reach a separate audience with digital stations, from audiences who would rather hear more of a certain genre of music." The first two weeks will see programmes hosted by famous Flemish or Dutch-speaking artists.

Radio broadcast organisations are taking steps to make sure radio is appropriately represented as automobile OEMs expand their use of Android Automotive. The goal of the Android Automotive pilot project is to make sure broadcast radio is properly supported in the open source system and help broadcast radio benefit from its rollout.

GB News is planning to launch in July and will be available on DAB across the UK. CEO Angelos Frangopoulos said: “GB News is a digital start-up designed to bring greater plurality of voices to UK media so we’re passionate about delivering our programmes on every platform we can, including live DAB digital radio.”

During the second half of 2020 and in the first months of 2021, DAB Italia gave strong impetus to the development of its DAB+ network. Recent transmitter activations have taken place in Brescia, Valtrompia, Gardone, Lumezzane, Veneto, and Cortina D'Ampezzo. DAB+ coverage in Sicily has also been significantly increased.

11 of the 17 independent Brussels radio stations authorised to broadcast on DAB+ have joined together to form an association called "dab.brussels". Their priorities are to obtain optimised broadcasting conditions and financial support for costs associated with operating on DAB+.

New WorldDAB member RF2Digital provides automotive radio solutions for global radio standards including DAB. The solutions are based on SDR (Software Defined Radio) technology that can be implemented on any automotive SoCs. We hear more about RF2Digital's offer in this interview with Technical Director William Kim.

A total of nine radio broadcasters have applied for the DAB+ capacities advertised by MABB - the Berlin based media authority. Applicants include Rock Antenne Berlin, Mega Radio, Radio Holiday, The Radio Group, Babelsberg Hitradio and Antenne Bayern.

The network operator for the DAB+ private radio multiplex in Germany's third largest state Baden-Württemberg is in the process of expanding commercial radio's reach to cover the whole state, which borders with France and Switzerland and has a population of over 11m inhabitants.

The transposition of the European directive requiring the integration of broadcast digital radio in automobiles was published in the Journal Officiel (OJ) on 27 May, putting an end to the many questions about the integration of DAB+ in receivers in France. Other radios (terminals), for which the reception function of radio services broadcast is not purely incidental, and have an alphanumeric screen, must be capable of receiving digital terrestrial radio.

Since there is more room on DAB+ than on FM, which is saturated, new radios are further enriching their offer. Today, one in five DAB+ stations is a new service. The next major step for DAB+ will be the launch of national services in autumn 2021, with two allotments totalling 25 national DAB+ services, starting with the coverage of the Paris-Lyon-Marseille motorway.