Shri M Venkaiah Naidu, Minister for Information & Broadcasting has said that Digital Radio provided a unique opportunity for all the stakeholders both public and private broadcasters to carry forward the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister to achieve Digital and Connectivity Revolution in the Country. Digital Radio technology would provide listeners with significantly improved audio quality and service reliability at an affordable price. The Minister mentioned this during his address at the Digital Radio for All Round Table Conference organised by Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) along with Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL).
Elaborating further, Shri Naidu said that it was an opportune moment for automotive manufacturers and retailers to incorporate Digital Radio systems in vehicles that provided consumers with significantly improved audio quality and service reliability at an affordable price. This would enable the scaling up and adoption of this new Digital Technology. The Digital Radio provides benefits to all the stakeholders, including Listeners, Manufacturers, Broadcasters and Regulators.
Regarding achievements of All India Radio in adopting Digital Radio Technology, Shri Naidu mentioned that All India Radio has already completed the technical installation and upgradation of 37 powerful transmitters in the first phase of Digitization of Radio Broadcast, a project unparalleled in the world today. This would ensure reduced electric power consumption for all digital transmissions, saving All India Radio and taxpayers significant transmission cost in the future. He added that All India Radio has re-invented itself through its Digital Transmitters based on the International ITU standard Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM).
Emphasizing on the need for the Traffic advisory services on National Highways, Shri Naidu said that the next phase of this service through AIR FM Transmitters needs to be digitised based on the ITU standards to exploit its full potential. The service would offer multiple radio program, detailed and multi-lingual on-demand traffic & travel information and emergency warning services.
From the Listeners perspective the Digital Transmission would provide Crystal clear and better-than-FM sound quality, enhanced program choice, free access to textual news, sports, travel and weather information from the Internet in many languages simultaneously and would enable the transmission of emergency warning for immediately alerting the population in case of pending disasters.
From a commercial perspective, the system provides audiences with receivers at an affordable price as well as an attractive package of benefits which include wider range of services, easier tuning and selection of programming, improved stereo and surround sound in cars amongst others.
From a technical perspective, a key and a revolutionary feature of DRM is the ability to select from a range of Transmission Modes. This allows the Broadcaster to balance or exchange bit-rate capacity, signal robustness, transmission power and coverage. The DRM broadcasting system is specifically designed to allow the new digital transmission to co-exist with the current analogue broadcasts.
| Key Benefits of DRM | |
| Listeners | · Excellent quality sound in stereo · Data such as text and pictures · Easy tuning on station name |
| Manufacturers | · Replace receivers with new digital receivers
· Increase the market potential · Increase possibilities for new areas of interest and content |
| Broadcasters | · Multilingual Program
· Reduced power consumption of upto 40-50% · Increased opportunity for revenue generation streams |
| Regulators |
· Uses less spectrum · An International standard · Green Broadcasting- Low power cost · Emergency warning alert |