Spectrum is still congested in fringe metro markets, the current plan has Gosford and Wollongong sharing the same DAB channel, and Newcastle and Campbelltown sharing another channel.
Coverage will be somewhat restricted to prevent interference to the other market.
But yes, beyond that, spectrum shouldn’t be so much of an issue, particularly where Digital TV is all on UHF.
There’s not many places significantly far away from high power VHF Digital TV transmissions that you could reuse the frequencies without creating a risk of interference with TV reception, or with the eventual planning for high-power Regional DAB.
In addition, can’t see them planning services on currently utilised VHF spectrum until there’s certainty about strategies to clear the 600MHz band. If there are regional areas far enough away from other VHF broadcasts that they could be planned for DAB usage, they’d probably prefer to move UHF DTV down into that space to help clear it for 5G.
The ACMA also couldn’t act alone here - there’s no legislative concept of narrowcast DAB or DAB only commercial stations - you currently can only get access to apply for a digital radio license as an existing commercial/community/national license - so you’d need amendments to allow them to create such licenses.
ACMA are taking their cues with digital radio from the broadcasters (and their representation bodies), mainly because they are the ones having to fund the rollout. It doesnt help that there are considerable challenges that are going to be difficult to overcome
Even if there were coverage limits, I couldn’t see that working too well.
Newcastle & Campbelltown in particular would be a mess during Summer, especially since it’s possible to receive DVB-T from Mount Sugarloaf in the Macarthur region when the conditions are right.
… and like I said, the attitude is “it ain’t gonna happen” … if they can manage it in an area as congested as the UK, if the will was there the same could be done in Oz … it just doesn’t suit certain groups of people …
Agree 100%. If they can manage it in the UK which is by far more congested than anywhere in Australia they could do it here. There’s just a failure of planning and will of the operators.
It’s a grave mistake by the operators to rely on AM/FM and online. If they push people online they will lose as people find better alternatives online. DAB, particularly in cars, is the only anchor operators have against streaming other content. That’s how the UK operators are using it. If they can keep people on terrestrial radio via DAB they have a better chance of keeping most of their audience. Australian radio is going to learn the hard way I think.
As I mentioned above - the UK are in a position where their spectrum is differently congested and in some ways, relatively free to use.
High power is very congested - there’s only a small number of blocks they can use, and they rely very heavily on SFNs to fill in coverage without overspill causing an inability to reuse their limited frequencies. But low power services they’ve got a number of additional blocks they can use with coverage/power conditions, which are okay for community stations, but not if you’re trying to cover a whole region.
DAB was the wrong choice for Australia and always will be, all the problems our rollout is facing were foreseeable - and some of them were foreseen and DAB chosen precisely because it was going to cause the problems for competition and choice that it has resulted in.
The ACMA then basically has to just deal with the tools they are given - when you have media laws driven by the media companies that it seeks to regulate, you’re going to have bad outcomes. But if the ACMA legislatively cannot allocate DAB licenses to broadcasters who don’t have analogue licenses - can’t exactly blame them from not setting up an equivalent to the small scale licenses in the UK.
Actually that’s not quite right. Over there they have all the VHF spectrum available for DAB. Channels 6 to 13. The UK has no VHF television so they have plenty of frequency blocks to play with.
I think we sold off too much spectrum to telcos.
All very easy to say in hindsight though.
… pedantic correction … the UK has no VHF television now … it was dispensed with in the eighties … which again brings us back to decades of poor planning by the pencil pushers in Oz …
We haven’t sold off enough.
The primary benefit to the public of having broadcast band commercial services is if they give back to the public in terms of either paying license fees for that access, which broadcasters have had slashed over the years; or providing local services to their market - which they increasingly don’t with excessive networking.
If we are having to provide huge tax concessions to stations to do any local content, give them essentially free access to valuable spectrum, and you still end up with most stations being networked or voice-tracked; when do you decide that there’s vastly more public value in improving the bandwidth for providing better mobile services?
AM/FM is fine - there’s no real tension for that space, as would DRM+ in Band I/II - but DAB’s spectrum inefficiency, combined with the questionable value to the public of freely giving slightly more space to our incumbent broadcasters with no requirements on the content, makes it a much tougher sell.
Further spectrum allocations to DAB, are even more unjustified and make it more difficult to shift TV out of the even more valuable UHF bands.
Spectrum is a finite resource and we should be seeking efficiency to extract the best value
Aus. DAB can’t be compared to UK DAB, not only do they have more VHF spectrum to play with, Australia has the highest powered DAB in the world at 50kW & there’s still multiple translators & not all of the metro licence areas are covered.
I’d have to look it up, (but someone else can do it for me, which I’m sure they will), but UK DAB powers are piss weak compared with ours & what we need for coverage.
Compare coverage of your local metro ABC AM station, to the DAB including all the current translators, then think how many DAB translators will be needed or the transmit power from one main site to get the coverage of ABC Central West at Cumnock NSW for example.
DAB is great for small countries in Europe, low or micro power main sites with very few translators will cover the entire country using minimal spectrum, large spread out countries like Australia & the USA using DAB for digital radio is so wrong of a technology it’s not funny, despite how good some of you city dwellers think DAB is.
DAB use in Australia is honestly cost prohibitive to setup & maintain & the broadcasters can’t afford it, the broadcasters in the metro areas are not happy about the costs of running the DAB Joint Venture companies for DAB now, let alone add all Regional Australia to their costs, this is why the ABC, BAI & somewhat ACMA have pushed back on DAB use.
Over the next 12-18 months all main DAB transmitters will have to be replaced at a huge cost because they are at end of life, all DAB translators will have to have a lot of works done to them as well even if those transmitters are not replaced, broadcasters can’t afford that & spend millions rolling out DAB regionally too, that’s why is isn’t going to happen.
I often wonder whether the NBN FTTP roll out should have had scope for FTA TV delivery over the fibre. Especially in green field estates, no TV antennas on new homes. No spectrum required for fibre delivery and in black spot areas they could have gone all fibre to homes with no need for a local low powered DVB-T translator saving valuable spectrum.
Of course the reality is that the NBN FTTP roll out was limited the there is also a slim chance of TV black spot areas having FTTP to all households. But in the long term as FTTP is slowly made more available and coupled with access to VAST, this might slowly make the requirement for low powered DVB-T translators limited and leave us with just the main high power transmitters saving some spectrum.
Great read RFBurns.
I would also argue whats the point of DAB in regional areas.
My experience in Hobart (where the commercial and community mux is run by a joint venture company between SCA and Grants) is that DAB initially offered new services and greater choice. This was the case early on, with ABC and SBS offering the full suite of radio programming.
The commercial guys upped their game also simulcasting their main FM’s, plus up to 3 other services into Hobart.
Arguably this worked well and was probably a reasonably good model for any larger scale regional DAB rollout, a joint venture and BAI owning the Mux’s.
However…I suspect the commercial guys have struggled to understand DAB’s place in the market in Hobart. Our FM services (whilst not the most powerful in the country) do well coverage wise due to elevation, DAB can’t compete for coverage, and pockets of the metro area even miss out totally on service.
I would argue also the total lack of promotion of new services on DAB (except for SCA’s triple M who run regular DAB liners) is totally non existent. Grant’s went from 1 FM to 4 services on DAB but they never promote them, and clearly they don’t even listen to them, as they have historically had long periods of ‘carrier no audio’. Even the ABC promote DAB ambiguously on-air as ‘digital’, preferring to preference the app over any other outlet, even (in my opinion) their AM service. You never hear the phrase 936 muttered anymore. This is partly due to networking, but when local they never use it.
Now this week we see SCA adding a huge amount of streams stuffed into their allocation on the Mux, with an error correction change, this has made SCA’s DAB service in my area almost useless on the move due to dropouts.
So I would question again the point of DAB in regional areas, it appears the ACMA are hamstrung due to frequency allocations, broadcaster’s aren’t fan’s due to the costs involved and arguably the very little audience gains involved, and the coverage isn’t the best due to technical limitations. Seems like the only real winners are Axicom and BAI, who will hoover up that sweet sweet tower lease space coin for decades to come.
DAB is a technology that hit Hobart 10 years to late, when most people have Tune-in or similar in their pockets why bother with a DAB tuner.
DAB is struggling to find its place here in Hobart, and in my cohort of friends struggling to find relevance, and I work in the RF industry.
Capital/Grant’s My Canberra Digital often had the same problem.
When I checked the other day, 2SM and Zoo were the only SRN/BOG channels running programming in Sydney.
If some broadcasters have long periods of no audio, then you really have to wonder why they bother running additional services rather than just have their existing stations at a higher bitrate.
… and once again, the problem … the problem with DAB+ in Oz is the same as digital television when it was first mooted … everyone looks at it from the perspective of the incumbent broadcasters rather than an opportunity for new players … as a result first TV companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do something with the digital space they had been given and are still treating the additional channels as something of second class citizens … right now commercial radio is even worse with the results that you’ve set out in your comment … if there was an opportunity for serious competition, you would then see a totally different attitude from the incumbents … but sadly no politician in Oz has the kahoonas to rattle the cage …
Speak of the devil, I think 2SM DAB is broken at the moment, no audio. I think it has been 1 hour at least. Even for 2SM if 1269 lost audio I don’t think they allow it to be off air for 1 hour unless there was “real” physical/major damage to the equipment.
There has been a lack of impetus to allow new players for some time (even pre-digital)