With digitization of radio set to roll out soon, consumers are still unaware of many positive changes the process carries. At a special seminar by the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) Consortium, the key growth points and advantages were highlighted and the current status of the roll out was the focus.

The new DRM digital radio technology will provide Indian listeners across the country access to more content choice with improved sound quality, as well as access to digital features including text news, sports results and automatic disaster warning in multiple languages.

All India Radio has around 100 per cent coverage across the country on medium wave broadcasting and they use short wave for external transmissions. But due to industrialization, the transmission quality is getting deteriorated. There are a lot of noise issues and listeners are not happy with the analogue as far as the domestic coverage is concerned, while on the short wave the signal is not available frequently.

These problems of analogue transmissions can well be taken care of when radio goes in for digitization. Keeping the same in mind, the government of India in its Eleventh Plan decided that AIR and its transmission should be digitized. Therefore, a time bound plan was worked upon by the Planning Commission in the Eleventh Plan, which stated that radio will turn digital by 2017.

The move will help the transmission quality improve and also enhance reach, as the FM band is limited only from 88 Mhz to 108 Mhz with the whole band is not available for broadcasting. Moreover, there are a number of users with community radio stations coming up, private FM stations and there is also the demand for entertainment, sports, news, education and more which cannot be catered to by the FM band.

Speaking at the DRM Consortium, Former AIR chief engineer Yogendra Pal said, “All these demands cannot be met in FM. In FM, at the most we can have around 500-600 channels throughout the country. So that is not sufficient. At present, AIR has 42 per cent coverage on-air, while private FM has only around 20 per cent coverage. Even after the Phase III is implemented which will take two years or so, the coverage will be around 50 per cent. So, if we want to cover the entire country on FM, we don’t have the spectrum.”

And with technology advancements, the existing transmitters will have to either be converted into digital or some of them will have to be replaced with digital. The only difference will be that the listener will have to purchase a different receiver to receive the digital signals.
It will certainly be a chance to take, to witness if users get accustomed to this change as FM is very popular even as compared to medium and short wave transmission.

“FM quality is certainly better. Secondly FM receivers have also come in mobile phones now and there is a huge expansion there. Today we have more than 600 million mobile phone receivers in the country, and people enjoy listening there and FM is available on that. The government has also allowed private stations to come on FM, they are not allowed on medium wave and short wave because there is a competition available on FM,” he added.

He further stated that with post digitization, no spectrum will be saved because it’s a broadcast band which will be used only for that purpose. There will be a lot of advantages as in analogue they could only provide one program per transmitter, but in digital they can give upto four programs on the same transmitter and the quality is that of FM with a stereo service.

There are different systems on digital and AIR has adopted the system known as DRM, which is being used for external broadcast service by most of the country.

AIR currently has around 146 medium wave transmitters of different power. The highest is 1000 KW. There are three transmitters of the kind, one each in Rajkot, Kolkata and Nagpur. The Nagpur transmitter is used for national service, and FM is mainly being used for entertainment programs.

The technology is just being introduced in the country and might take a lot of time to be implemented. AIR’s Rajkot transmitter has been energized into digital showcasing signs that it is just coming in.

Pal stated, “There are 60 crore radio sets in our country but are all analogue. DRM will enable the simulcast mode in analogue and digital. The government of India has approved around 72 transmitters of AIR to be digitized and once they are operational 70 per cent of the listenership will be able to get the digital reception on radio. So the coverage of Vividh Bharati will grow from 10-12 per cent currently to 70 per cent.”

Another plus point is that you don’t have to tune your station by the number of frequency. So the user will have to have a kind of display screen to show what station they can select. To work out the same, a listener will need a separate receiver which has a display screen like mobile phones. It will display the stations which are available and we can select one similar to what we do on mobiles.
Apart from that, there is also a provision that the broadcaster will define his service is available from which all transmitters so that the receiver can select the particular transmitter to enable listening when in no coverage zones as the listener travels.

In terms of content, it is stated to bring about very important features with the most highlighted one being a disaster management system. If there is a warning message, whichever station the user is listening to, it will automatically tune in to that message.

It will also have a number of value added services to say what is coming up next, cricket score or breaking news. You can give all that in test mode. If digital receivers come in mobile phones, listeners can access it from those devices as well. Attempts are being made for the same.

“In India, there are two kinds of requirements. One is the existing mobile phones and secondly the new handsets which should come with these digital receivers. Attempts are also being made that cars can have such receivers as well,” he expressed.

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