22 Nov Why Shall we Save Energy – 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.
Why shall we save energy on digital broadcasting when 5G will do it anyway?
(conference Q@A)
5G is mainly the home of telcos whose business model is to monetise each and every service, not the model of terrestrial analogue and digital broadcasting. Ultra and Super High Frequencies are used by mobile internet. High speed 5G uses the 27 GHz band and higher, which requires repeaters 900m apart, which gives a coverage area of 2.5 km² for which repeater. Slower 5G and older generations use around 1GHz which can cover around 300 km². So, this requires huge numbers of air-conditioned base stations to cover regions without black spots while using lots of electricity. Some of the electricity is anyway lost on the long power lines.
The newest and greenest terrestrial broadcasting option is to use Digital Radio Mondiale for all frequency bands above and below 30 MHz: LW, SW, MW and VHF bands I, II-FM and III.
If a DRM transmitter in the VHF band is carrying three programmes, then the electricity consumption must be divided by three making it 19 % of an FM transmitter carrying the same program. The same transmitter feed with a 6-channel modulator for 6 consecutive transmission frequencies, the electricity consumption per program will decrease even more.
