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 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.