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from the elites-with-flawed-data-making-choices dept.
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: 3, Informative) by NoMaster on Tuesday April 28 2015, @10:51PM
Not so in the case of DAB/DAB+ - it uses different frequencies (typically 'Band III' i.e. the VHF TV band from ~170MHz to ~240MHz*, rather than the ~88MHz to 108MHz FM band). In fact, it was specifically designed so that multiple DAB muxes (~1.5MHz bandwidth each) fit fairly well into typical standard TV channel bandwidths (5/6/7/8MHz wide).
Not to mention that a major selling point of DAB/DAB+ is its claims of higher efficiency (alleged much lower transmitter power required + sharing the costs across broadcasters). It doesn't quite add up as well the DAB Consortium & their many local lobby groups claim, and basically amounts to 'greenwashing', but it's certainly true to some extent - and so keeping the analogue FM going in parallel means double the running costs (or more).
In short, it's not like HDRadio IBOC as used in (pretty much only) the US, where the digital signal is shoehorned across the sidebands of the existing analogue (& adjacent) channels.
(* Yes, that's ignoring the L-band allocation, which AFAIK no-one actually uses - though Canada, among others, did for a while...)
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