The EBU Digital Radio Summit brought together global experts to discuss current hot topics around hybrid and digital radio. The full-day event on Feb. 17 addressed different aspects of radio today with emphasis on connected cars and the various ways in which local information can be stored locally and made available to listeners seamlessly.
The day included broadcaster updates and strategic insights from around the world, a presentation on Radio France’s content strategy for the Connected Car, news from Radioplayer and a panel on the NAB Pilot Connected Car project. In addition, they addressed mobile application innovations and had a session on different paths to Digital Radio within Nordic countries.
On the topic of DRM, BBC’s Nigel Fry presented on “Pushing the frontiers with Digital Radio Mondiale,” offering a global view of the future of radio. He pointed out that the future is digital, but about half of the world’s population don’t have access to digital services. Fry gave some stark statistics in support: In 2018, four out of five people below the international poverty line lived in rural areas. Half of the poor are children. Women represent a majority of the poor in most regions and among some age groups. About 70 percent of the global poor aged 15 and over have no schooling or only some basic education. Almost half of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa live in just five countries: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Madagascar.
Fry noted that the DRM standard, which uses the medium wave, shortwave and VHF bands, has been adopted by India, China and Pakistan; South Africa will use it to serve also rural audiences; and there’s significant investment in China and tests in Russia and Indonesia.
He spoke of some of the advantages of DRM (including its spectrum and energy efficiency), its sustainability credentials and the capability to offer emergency warning and distance education. All this requires affordable and power-efficient receivers. The potential of the market in India has spurred on the technology development, said Fry, with devices now on the 3rd or 4th generation. He also gave as an example two U.K. companies, Cambridge Consultants and CML, which are working on a low-cost module packaged to allow easy adoption and local manufacture of radios. Their plan is to launch it later this year with the module priced under US$10.
In conclusion, Fry said that the challenge is now to encourage the even wider adoption of the DRM standard, promoting the rich digital content it can make available and encouraging the inclusion of DRM in development projects.
Recordings of the DRS presentations and videos are available to watch here.
