[cr-india] NEWS: AIR to tune in to digital audio broadcasting by year-end

[Frederick Noronha]

http://new.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=618
AIR to tune in to digital audio broadcasting by year-end

Nivedita Mookerji & Vandana Gombar in New Delhi

  In a major initiative, All India Radio (AIR) plans to launch digital 
audio broadcasting (DAB) in the country by the end of this year. Although 
the government has already given in-principle go-ahead to AIR for 
initiating action on DAB, the project is subject to approval of the Tenth 
Plan, which is in the process of being finalised.
To begin with, the DAB service, which is meant for all metros, will be 
available only in Delhi. Six stereo channels are being planned for the 
Capital. The remaining three metros will receive DAB only in the second 
phase, says head of AIR resources HO Srivastava.

DAB will be rolled out only in the FM band, but a listener cannot catch it 
on the regular FM radio sets. And there lies the catch. Points out Dr 
Srivastava that new receivers have to be purchased to access the DAB 
service, and that is an expensive proposition. At the current global rate, 
a DAB radio set is priced at around $200 or Rs 10,000.

The challenge therefore is to bring down the price to a realistic level for 
the price-sensitive Indian consumer. For that, AIR is in talks with 
UK-based manufacturers of DAB sets. One of these UK manufacturers is 
expected to tie up with radio manufacturers in India for making DAB-enabled 
sets in the country. Sets manufactured in India are estimated to cost much 
less than the imported ones, according to Dr Srivastava.

The success of DAB, a non-proprietary service, will depend on whether 
Indian manufacturers are able to make the sets cheaper or not. Currently, 
there are two standards being followed worldwide for digital audio 
broadcasting—Eureka and In-Band-On-Channel (IBOC). India plans to follow 
the Eureka system which is prevalent in the UK. Among other countries, 
Singapore started DAB sometime in June 2001, China is doing trial runs for 
the same and Malaysia plans to launch the service soon. In European 
countries, DAB is quite popular in underground/metro trains.

The primary objective behind launching the DAB service is ‘quality’, says 
Dr Srivastava. ‘‘The sound quality is comparable to that of CDs and is 
relatively immune to multipath interference,’’ explains Dr Srivastava in 
his recently-released book ‘Interactive TV-Technology & Markets’.

Also, DAB is much more spectrum-efficient since a single frequency can be 
shared for the entire national terrestrial network. Finally, not only does 
digital radio offer high-quality sound while on the move, but also some 
limited multimedia as well, he adds.

AIR peddles FM time slots to pvt operators in non-metros