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Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

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Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#91

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

audunw wrote: post #82
dagss wrote: post #55

Consensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead). The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose…

I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it. But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-…

It will have to replace it because users chose different things. In Austria more people now listen to Spotify than DAB.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#92

Post by notimetorelax »

vassy wrote: post #60

DAB radio in my car stopped working and it costs £650 to fix. The service guys said they have to replace the whole centre console. As I won't pay that much, it's FM radio or Bluetooth for me.

To play devil's advocate, FM radio broke in my car with a similar price to fix it. What you describe is not unique to DAB radio.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#93

Post by lb1lf »

audunw wrote: post #82
dagss wrote: post #55

Consensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead). The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose…

I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it. But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-…

>I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth.

-True, but surely one could simply allocate bandwidth in the 4G network to multicast at least the most popular channels? (This may be a very stupid question; I know a thing or two about broadcast networks, but hardly a thing about computer networks. It all went downhill after Token Ring, as far as I am concerned. :))

That being said, I think it would have been smarter to stick with FM, but we should cut our politicians some slack - I think it would be unfair to expect them to realize in 1992-1993 or whenever the decision to go DAB was made that by the time it gained some traction, there would be a national, wireless, high-speed data network which could to a large extent provide the same service DAB does.

DAB coverage is still spotty, though, claims to the contrary nonwithstanding - when I drive along one of the most heavily used routes in Møre og Romsdal county (E39/E136 between Ålesund and Vestnes), I get consistently good FM coverage and DAB with decent quality most of the time, but several dozen dropouts lasting from a few seconds to perhaps a minute.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#95

Post by lb1lf »

audunw wrote: post #80
dtech wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't the spectrum be used/sold for other purposes? Otherwise stopping FM isn't much use.

> Otherwise stopping FM isn't much use. I think the main motivation to shut down FM is that now that DAB is built-out sufficiently (or so they say), running both at the same time is expensive. FM transmitters are supposedly quite power hungry and expensive to operate. It will take at least a decade or two to free up the FM band for other uses anyway. Norway will probably wait and use it in a way that aligns with the…

Correct; FM is very power inefficient, particularly in Norway where one needs quite literally thousands of repeaters to provide coverage to every nook and cranny where someone saw fit to settle down... :)

Also, only the national broadcasters vacate the FM network; local radio stations are free to keep using FM for the foreseeable future.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#96

Post by henrikschroder »

audunw wrote: post #82
dagss wrote: post #55

Consensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead). The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose…

I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it. But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-…

> For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth.

Yes, but that's a problem for the telco's to solve, if they want to continue selling mobile internet. So they have strong incentives to solve it.

> One is emergency broadcasts

How is having to buy an expensive device to listen to emergency broadcasts a benefit? One of the reasons DAB was scrapped in Sweden was this. Everyone and their grandmother has a bunch of FM radios already, no purchases necessary, it's deployed, it works. Shutting down FM means less people will be able to listen to emergency broadcasts. That's bad, not a benefit.

Besides, most modern smartphones have emergency broadcast functionality that's accessible to local authorities. And everyone and their grandmother already has a smartphone.

> the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades.

DAB or DAB+ ? The poor bleeding edgers who bought a DAB radio got pretty pissed when they had to throw it out and buy a DAB+ radio instead. All five of them. Not a good track record exactly. Meanwhile, FM has been going strong for almost 100 years now.

> But what if you want built-in streaming in your car, which standard do you support?

There's two: iOS CarPlay and Android Auto. Works great. Everyone already has a smartphone, and can then use whatever streaming app or service they want.

> I also think we tech geeks overestimate the popularity of streaming in cars

The only thing being overestimated is the general public's eagerness to run out and buy a DAB+ car radio. It's pretty much at zero.

Look, broadcast radio is going away just like broadcast television. It's a dying medium. And to force a change while it's dying will only hasten its demise.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#97

Post by geon »

gravypod wrote: post #64
timonoko wrote: post #23

FM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing. The cell-phone digital network is much more advanced, the antennas are on mountain tops and there is always coverage within few hundred meters.

What is a fjord?

A coastal mountain type originally designed by Slartibartfast. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#98

Post by lb1lf »

kieranelby wrote: post #71
dagss wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be cheaper to develop a system for mass-SMS in a crisis and publicize it than to keep FM/DAB running, and I bet the delivery rate of the crisis message would be an order of magnitude higher.

Not if the crisis involves mains power outage - cell towers don't generally have backup power so mobile phones will be useless. Edit: Adding generators/batteries to a significant fraction of cell towers is (probably) impractical due to them being bulky, expensive, and attractive to thieves.

This is not correct in the case of Norway, at least - I believe (mind, believe, I do not know for sure) that telcos are mandated by law to have emergency power supplies available; whenever we have a massive power outage, cell service stays up for hours, if not days afterwards.

Them being bulky is a major deterrent to theft, as a lot of our cellphone infrastructure is way out in the boonies and not really accessible unless you REALLY want to get to it...

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#99

Post by kalleboo »

audunw wrote: post #82
dagss wrote: post #55

Consensus from a lunch table in Norway: It was stupid to spend money on DAB now, it happens right as people move from radio to streaming. Many will move to streaming on 4G instead of DAB (which seems to have as good coverage or better, at least for me...then consider if the money spent on DAB had been spent on cellular instead). The populist party that kicked it off in the first place is now the only party to oppose…

I doubt that 4G is capabable of replacing FM/DAB. Radio is broadcast, 4G is individual streams. For a whole morning queue full of cars, that's a lot of bandwidth. Probably the next generation will be good enough to handle it. But this still ignores other benefits of DAB over mobile data. One is emergency broadcasts, the other is future-proofing. DAB will probably be a standard for decades. But what if you want built-…

Audio is surprisingly low-bandwidth compared to what today's networks are designed for. I'm not sure what the total bandwidth of a site is, but I've gotten 130 Mbps speed test results over 4G - right there you have up to 2000 typical DAB+ streams, and I'm certain a site can handle multiples of that.

And if people are listening to something like Spotify, a lot of the data will be cached.

Re: Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

#100

Post by varjag »

timonoko wrote: post #23

FM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing. The cell-phone digital network is much more advanced, the antennas are on mountain tops and there is always coverage within few hundred meters.

Problem is DAB coverage sucks compared to FM, it's not an improvement. In the Western Norway with hundreds of tunnels only the bigger ones are equipped with radio relays. Plenty of dead spots outside major highways too.

I had to drive Bergen-Voss 4x last June around the time a landslide ruined E16, taking a different detour each time. Very spotty in the tunnels along Hardanger, which is a major route. Even worse out there along fv344 which goes mostly on the surface, but through numerous tiny valleys.

There was a talk about postponing the FM sunset, which would be wise given that majority of vehicles don't have DAB support, and some of the most popular models are still sold without DAB tuners. Either way, DAB is an unfortunate transitional technology. Sounded nice in 2000, obsolete now. I concur that 4G network streaming would make much more sense in this era.

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