Government of India seems to have had a change of heart as far as its digitization strategy for radio is concerned.
The first phase of India’s radio digitization — which has the potential to deliver CD-quality sound on radio receivers — was started around 11 years ago.
Under this strategy, Prasar Bharati has finished putting up 38 digital radio towers across the country, which cover a large chunk of the country.
Three out of the 38 transmit digital radio signals globally using the short wave band, while the other 35 have been put up in the medium wave band. A MW station can deliver its signals up to a distance of around 300-350 km, and two or three are usually enough to cover an entire state.
However, despite All India Radio having one of the most advanced digital radio networks in the world, practically no one in India listens to over-the-air digital radio services, calling into question the extensive investment that has been made in this sector.
The primary reason for the blunder has been that India chose the wrong platform — Digital Radio Mondiale — a technology that is particularly suited as a stand-in replacement for analog medium wave and short wave transmissions.
However, India paid the price of being an early adopter, as most other countries went with other technologies. European countries, for example, went with DAB or Digital Audio Broadcast, while the US market saw the proliferation of proprietary technologies.
Because of the fragmentation of the market, radio makers feared that receivers manufactured for the DRM platform would not benefit from economies of scale, and most radio manufacturers preferred to focus on other technologies like DAB and its successor DAB+.
Even in India, where the DAB standard is not in use, digital radios based on this technology are available, while there are practically no DRM radio sets that cost less than Rs 3,000 in the market.
RETHINK
The failure of the digital radio project seems to have prompted the central government to have a rethink on its strategy, going by comments made by the information and broadcasting ministry today.
Responding to the question of when the remaining stations of All India Radio are going to be digitized, I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar indicated that the government is still evaluating the best technology to adopt for future projects.
“Testing is currently underway to evaluate latest Digital Terrestrial Radio Technologies/ Standards that are both backward compatible and ubiquitously available as well as in line with emerging standards such as 5G Direct to Mobile Broadcasting,” he said.
“[The] roadmap for further digitalization of terrestrial radio services will be based on evaluation of these latest technologies and their viability.”
Digital transmission, whether of radio or TV, results in high quality delivery of signals with negligible deterioration in quality.
On the other hand, analog transmission, such as FM and AM, tends to be highly prone to interference and their signals cannot be compared to those of a CD or an MP3 player.
In the radio sector, even the private companies are using analog transmission due to the lack of digital listening devices (radio receivers) in the country, as well as lack of regulatory support for digital transmission.
There are, meanwhile, calls to allow private FM broadcasters to also start broadcasting in the digital mode, either as part of their existing licenses or as new licensees. The current FM band allocations contain so-called whites spaces or gaps that can be used to transmit digital radio signals.
One of the advantages of using such white spaces is that this would allow mobile phones with regular FM reception to start receiving digital signals as well through a software upgrade, with zero changes to the hardware.
India has had much greater success in digitizing its TV services via a massive campaign starting in the 2000s, and which lasted for around 10 years.
At present, nearly all cable and satellite TV services in India are carried on in the digital mode.
However, even in television, Prasar Bharati has been the laggard, and has not been able to keep pace with private companies when it comes to digitization. Even at present, nearly all over-the-air terrestrial transmission and consumption of television signals in India takes place in the analog mode, despite efforts being started two decades ago to convert OTA TV transmission to digital. (ultra.news)
