15 Jul What does Mondiale stand for in the name DRM? – Your Questions Answered

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18th May 2020

What does Mondiale stand for in the name DRM? [Eugen Ionescu, Romania]

Mondiale is the French word for global or worldwide. When a group of engineers from countries like the UK, Germany, France, US got together in the late 90s to devise a digital audio broadcasting standard to replace the crackly old shortwave and medium wave, they wanted to give it a name representative of them all and of the standard capabilities. Digital and radio are fairly universal and can be understood in a lot of languages. They also wanted to suggest that this is a unique open standard covering all bands, offering a solution for anywhere in the world and the word global would have perhaps been good enough. But as a sign of recognition for the French effort and universality of the standard, the word Mondiale or global was chosen. DRM was born and the standard recommended by ITU and ETSI became the registered trademark DRM. This is nowadays sometimes confused with digital rights management and so many other drm organisations and activities. But DRM is the real deal and its rollout is indeed wide-ranging, worldwide or mondiale. You can find out more about it on www.drm.org