Making DAB Work: New Opportunities for Digital Radio in Europe

Abstract

Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) is now commonplace in a number of European jurisdictions. However, in the greater scheme of things, its success, when compared to early predictions, has been somewhat limited. Technologies it was intended to supplant (most notably analogue FM broadcasting) continue to thrive, whilst alternative platforms, such as the smartphone and connected speakers (e.g. Amazon's Alexa and Google Home) have recently gained rapid mass acceptance. In addition, new programme delivery methods (podcasting, and "listen again" services etc.) within the online environment, have emerged to further diversify the reception options available. Although such developments are, doubtless, complicating factors, this chapter suggests that it is not these that are primarily responsible for limiting DAB's wider international success to date. Rather, it is argued, the key issue is DAB's historic inability to provide an all-encompassing transmission platform, suitable for use across the entire broadcast radio sector. Bluntly put, DAB has not been seen as a comprehensive replacement technology. Unlike FM broadcasting before it, DAB has yet to prove itself capable of meeting the needs of all types of radio broadcaster, that is to say from the largest public service operators and commercial concerns, right through to the various smaller commercial and not-for-profit community radio service providers. A key difficulty with the technology has been its historical inability to deliver small-scale broadcast coverage on a cost-effective basis. In addition, such a lack of flexible scalability in terms of coverage has tended to be reinforced by DAB coverage planning approaches and spectrum occupancy plans that have, perhaps understandably, or even conveniently, assumed minimal use of the platform by such smaller operators.