09 Apr Indian government approves country’s Digitalisation plan using DRM
London, April 9th 2010: The Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) Consortium has welcomed the Indian government‘s approval of All India Radio (AIR)’s ambitious plan of converting its vast broadcasting network to digital using the DRM standard. India is one of the first countries in the world to implement such an extensive and well-researched plan to upgrade its radio infrastructure using the global open DRM radio technology and thereby ensuring that it can maintain significant reach to its 1.2 billion strong population whilst delivering enhanced radio services.
India’s Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure on Thursday 8th April gave its approval to the proposal from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting regarding 11th Plan of Digitalisation where Rs 9.20 billion (approx 200 million USD) have been earmarked for AIR to convert to digital which will cover approx 70 per cent of the country. By converting to digital, AIR will deliver enhanced radio services that offer crystal clear sound, increase user experience with additional functionality such as automatic tuning by station name, interactive user interface through digital screens that offer slide-shows and many other services like EPG, Journaline.
The digitisation scheme involves the installation of over 40 digital (DRM capable) transmitters as well as other digital enhancements and networks for both state radio and television.
All India Radio (AIR) began moving towards digitisation with the adoption of the DRM standard after extensive field trials and tests since 2007 that was offering in their opinion the most ‘robust, reliable’ technology. Last year, it started a regular DRM broadcast from one of its high-power shortwave transmitter located at Khampur near Delhi and this year it acquired two high powered MW DRM transmitters.
About DRM
Digital Radio MondialeTM (DRM) is the universal, openly standardised digital broadcasting system for all broadcasting frequencies up to 174MHz, including LW, MW, SW, band I and II (FM band).
DRM provides digital sound quality and the ease-of-use that comes from digital radio, combined with a wealth of enhanced features: Surround Sound, Journaline text information, Slideshow, EPG, and data services.
DRM on short, medium and long wave for broadcasting bands up to 30 MHz (called ‘DRM30’) provides large coverage areas and low power consumption. The enhancement of the DRM standard for broadcast frequencies above 30 MHz (‘DRM+’) uses the same audio coding, data services, multiplexing and signaling schemes as DRM30 but introduces an additional transmission mode optimized for those bands.
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