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El Reg reports
With digital reaching its audience targets, the government set a 2017 date for the death of analogue FM radio in [Norway].
[...]However, the Norwegian Local Radio Association disputes the communications ministry's figure, pointing instead to Norwegian Government Statistical Bureau data that "listening to DAB radio is presently limited to 19% on a daily basis."
In an e-mail sent to Vulture South [El Reg's Australian operation], the association says the Minister of Culture's announcement swept up DVB-T and Internet radio to claim that "digital listening" had hit the 50 per cent target that triggers an FM switch-off.
The association also notes that an all-DAB nation would provide a lot less service to motoring tourists without digital radios in their cars. "This proposed change means that most visitors will not be able to listen to national channels or public radio for emergency alerts, traffic or other important information", the group said in a media release e-mailed to El Reg. It claims that a focus on large broadcasters would leave FM investments by community radio stranded.
The local broadcasters are backed by the Progress Party, a partner in the coalition government in Norway, [as well as by] the Greens.
Related: Norway to be First Nation to Switch Off National Analog FM Stations
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday April 28 2015, @04:45PM
It would have been preferable to also switch AM stations to FM around the same time as the NTSC switch-off, thus opening even more bandwidth. Or are AM frequencies useless?
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(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday April 28 2015, @05:03PM
are AM frequencies useless?
Basically, yes. Other than local-ish regional-ish low bandwidth voice to an existing installed base of hardware.
Nobody is going to sell wireless internet bandwidth at 1 MHz RF freq etc. Useless for any other for-profit service. Theoretically if there were some weird shortage of aircraft NDB beacons or dGPS transmitters (which there are not) then the AM BCB would be a tolerable location for expansion. WRT non-profit services I'm sure the ham radio operators would find it scientifically intriguing to take the band over.
There is a slight power advantage. To get about the same land coverage you need maybe 5x to 10x the power going from AM to FM so there are financial issues. On the other end the hideous transmitting antenna for AM freqs isn't a problem anymore.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gnuman on Tuesday April 28 2015, @05:11PM
It would have been preferable to also switch AM stations to FM around the same time as the NTSC switch-off, thus opening even more bandwidth. Or are AM frequencies useless?
You should learn about bandwidth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_%28signal_processing%29 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting#Other_subcarrier_services [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_broadcasting#Broadcast_frequency_bands [wikipedia.org]
AM radio channel spacing is less than 10kHz. FM bandwidth is 10x that, generally spacing between stations is at least 200kHz. This is why AM radio will most likely remain as-is, while higher frequencies of FM are taken over by digital broadcasts.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday April 28 2015, @06:44PM
Except that digital broadcasts don't need all that bandwidth. Especially not TV broadcasts, which are digital and mostly move out of VHF.
The only thing contending for the upper end of the FM spectrum would be air to ground radio.
Also FM spacing is often as low as 50khs in europe, especially Italy where mountainous conditions (sounds like Norway) , and FM radio's capture selectivity can actually handle this quite well even if the radio can actually "hear" another station overlapping.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday April 28 2015, @11:54PM
Except that digital broadcasts don't need all that bandwidth. Especially not TV broadcasts, which are digital and mostly move out of VHF.
That's my point. They want to replace FM because FM is not very bandwidth friendly and there is pressure from the wireless internet space to free bandwidth. Digital signals not only occupy less bandwidth, they can have much better encoding than simple frequency modulation.
On the other hand, AM is much more bandwidth friendly. This is why no one is likely to touch standard AM frequencies (below 2MHz) for the foreseeable future.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday April 29 2015, @02:53AM
Let's have some perspective here. First, the entire FM radio band is 20MHz. That's almost enough for one WiFi channel. A digital television channel is 6 MHz wide, so you could get 3 inside the entire FM radio band.
The AM (medium wave) band is 1 MHz total, so taking it away would benefit nobody.