16 Nov Digital Sound Broadcasting – Your Question Answered
Our best specialists will respond in brief to your questions. We will post them regularly. Please submit them in writing and in audio with your picture and we will post the answers here. Please keep your questions short and relevant and send them to: projectoffice@drm.
16th November 2020
You mention DRM and DAB+ are complementary, open standards. Is there any country that is using both [Anonymous listener, France]
The best example so far is South Africa which mandated both in their digitisation policy published in July 2020. More details about how this will work are contained in a draft regulation recently published. South Africa is the first country in Africa and the world which has recommended both DRM (AM and FM) and DAB+ as standards (jointly called Digital Sound Broadcasting or DSB) to be used in digitising the terrestrial audio services of this large country. The draft regulations of November 13th aim at setting out the framework for the introduction of DSB. They also set out the procedure to be used in order to acquire a digital license. This will have to be followed by public, commercial and community stations and also refers to licensed signal distribution operators. As this is only a consultative document for now, it is to be seen what the South African broadcasters’ reaction will be and if there are some objections to the rather long time timeframe for receiving a digital broadcast approval/license (2 years) and the actual start of the digital broadcasts (2 years again). The November 2020 Draft on DSB Regulations represents a huge step forward on the way to South African radio digitisation but this will be an actual framework once it is finalised and officially published in 2021.
