
Norway switches off FM radio, but a station is defying government order - rocky1138
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.4446492/norway-switches-off-fm-radio-but-this-station-is-defying-government-order-1.4446857
======
chomp
I really dislike digital audio broadcasts. They have a higher quality, but the
lag associated with changing channels (I change between preset channels a lot)
makes it really annoying. Also when driving between cities, I can get FM
stations for a lot longer distance than the digital ones.

~~~
makecheck
The nice thing about analog is that signals may get _weaker_ but they don’t
just _go away_ as easily so you hear continuous music, etc.

Digital can be maddening because it alternates between crystal-clear and OFF,
which ultimately I think is worse. Some streaming services will also decide to
auto-next-song after the slightest glitch which is annoying too.

~~~
rb2k_
> Digital can be maddening because it alternates between crystal-clear and
> OFF, which ultimately I think is worse. Some streaming services will also
> decide to auto-next-song after the slightest glitch which is annoying too.

I wonder if there are audio codecs that work similarly to wavelet based video
codecs (DWT instead of DCT) where you could have stepwise degradation.

~~~
magnat
There is somewhat similar concept of Bitrate peeling [1] in Ogg Vorbis. You
can drop portion of the stream without transcoding and still be able to decode
original audio at lower bitrate. With proper over-the-air modulation and
multiplexing scheme (like ADSL interleaving), one should be able to have
graceful degradation of digital audio.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling)

~~~
madengr
Problem is the fading. You could drop the bitrate to boost the link margin a
few dB, which works fine for SATCOM, but it won't help with deep fades.
Putting two antennas on the car for diversity reception would work much
better; surprised no one is doing it.

~~~
xyzfoobarbaz
Only cheap car radios do not do diversity. A lot of cars have three antennas
and three or more tuners. You do not see all antennas, with a lot of cars you
do not see any radio antenna.

~~~
madengr
Ha ha, I guess my cars are too cheap. I have never had a car with more than
one VHF antenna.

------
htgb
My main issue with deprecating FM in favour of digital radio is its use for
emergency broadcasts or in war. Not because of the protocol itself, but
because of adoption: almost everyone has a working FM radio available, but few
people buy dedicated radios that support digital radio. I would guess that new
cars is the main source of compatible receivers.

~~~
mey
This was true a decade ago. After several moves, I no longer have VHS player,
Floppy disk drives, CRT, or radio. The only am/fm raidios are in our cars. If
anything AM should be kept on, as you can broadcast farther on lower power or
we should get younger generations into ham radio.

~~~
romaniv
Radios are still sold in stores. Also, Phones and MP3 players often have FM
radios. Heck, my best radio is probably my OP-1 synthesizer.

The real "magic" of FM radio that it something that Just Works. You don't have
to pay, you don't have to connect to some network, and it's something that
worked since late 1930s. No matter what people say, any current digital radio
formal will almost certainly obsolete in less than 20 years.

~~~
beckler
How do you like your OP-1?

~~~
romaniv
Love it. It's one of the most well-designed electronic devices I ever owned.
Rally fun to use. I think it's worth _studying_ as an example of great user
experience and designing for "emergent" features - even if you don't care
about synthesizers all that much.

Also, OP-1's synthesis capabilities are much deeper than it would seem from
reading the manual or watching a typical review. And it has an amazing online
community.

------
lb1lf
This is driven by a desire to cut costs; operating a DAB network is orders of
magnitude cheaper than FM.

The station in question ceased broadcasting at midnight, by the way, after
having been threatened with stiff fines.

NRK (PBS/CBC equivalent) has lost 1/5 of its listeners after the transition to
DAB. Tough luck.

~~~
alfla
Do you have a good source on the cost diff?

~~~
lb1lf
Nope.

The reason, however (doubly so in Norway, which is basically as inconvenient
as countries come for broadcasting purposes - lots of mountains and hardly any
people) is that in DAB, you interleave a lot of channels in one data stream,
transmitted from a single transmitter, whereas in FM, you need a dedicated
transmitter for each channel.

The lower power bill is the major benefit seen from an operator's point of
view.

Additionally, with FM you need to make sure no transmitters on the same
frequency can cover the same area, as that would lead to interference. With
DAB, they performed the brilliant trick of using multiple carriers to get the
symbol rate on each channel very low; this means that if two DAB transmitters
cover the same area, you get constructive interference - a signal boost
instead.

The benefit of this in Norway cannot be overstated - we have (literally!)
thousands of low-power FM relays to cover every nook and cranny with broadcast
radio. (Denmark, home to a larger population, had a handful of FM transmitter
sites.)

Hence network planning is a lot easier in a DAB network.

~~~
alfla
Ok, great answer. I live in Norway btw.

Both the constructive interference and reduced number of transmitter arguments
sound reasonable. I'm a bit more skeptical to the power cost, how much more
expensive can that really be for FM? Electric power is pretty cheap. Does not
really matter what the answer to this is though, given the other arguments.

At the moment I have to say I'm not very impressed with the coverage and
quality of DAB in Norway, in my opinion it seems worse than FM. But I'm
guessing this will only get better over time.

My main issue with the adoption is the requirement to buy new receivers, it's
just so much waste. The adapters they sell for cars are in general just so
ugly and a technically inelegant solution (local FM broadcasting, pretty
ironic). A funny anecdote I read in the news was that some of these adapters
come with a bluetooth handsfree solution, which also gets broadcast locally on
FM. This means that other people driving close to you can listen in on your
conversations if you use that functionality.

~~~
lb1lf
Hi,

Agreed - DAB coverage is seemingly much more spotty than what is claimed by
Norkring (the operator) - makes you wonder what models (or antennas, in the
case of field tests) they use to produce the maps.

Add to this the annoying property that whereas a FM signal degrades gracefully
- as the signal gets poorer, you simply get more hiss, but can still make out
what is being said, DAB basically drops off a cliff - it is fine until it -
well, isn't, at which point it is pretty much unlistenable.

As for power, there are two factors both tipping in DAB's favour - first of
all, you get good area coverage with lots of channels from one transmitter,
seeing as the different stations are interleaved in one stream - say, a dozen
channels for a realistic example. Having that same dozen channels on FM
covering the same area, you'd need a dozen transmitters, all illuminating the
same area.

Additionally, an FM tuner requires a signal which is significantly stronger if
it is to decode it properly than what a DAB receiver does.

(This benefit is somewhat offset, power-bill wise, by the fact that DAB final
amplifiers must be very, very linear in operation (because of the number of
carriers) whereas an FM amplifier need not bother about linearity at all -
and, hence, can be run at higher efficiency.)

(For a very rough comparison - the DAB transmitter on Tryvannshøgda providing
local radio to Oslo boasts less than 5kW output. The Radio Norge FM site next
to it? 88kW.

~~~
alfla
Thanks for the additional information, I completely agree with your
description of coverage and the graceful degradation of FM.

DAB has obviously arrived and is here to stay in Norway, but I'm interested to
see what the rest of the world does. My guess is that internet connected
vehicles will be a both cheaper and better solution for consumers in many
regions. Given the amount of data people use on their phones today, it seems
likely to me that providing audio streaming of DAB equivalent bandwidth is
feasible - even in Norway.

------
geforce
It's a similar debate as when we north americans decided to switch to DTTV
[1]. Many people disliked that; they had to buy a box for their old TV and it
was more complicated to use, etc...

Digital radio [2] has it's advantages. For once, it's more efficient in it's
use of the spectrum. In many densely populated towns, there is no (or not
many) more spectrum left for new broadcasters.

It's a matter of time, and people will adapt and forget they "hated it and
doesn't want to change".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_terrestrial_television](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_terrestrial_television)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio)

~~~
paulie_a
People hate change.

~~~
toomuchtodo
People hate costs being foisted on them (new receivers) by government. If DAB
is that much better (and cost effective), that government should've paid for
new receivers with the FM->DAB cost savings (the US gov subsidized digital TV
broadcast receivers when the transition occurred).

~~~
ajmurmann
You know "the government" is us, the people of the country, right?

~~~
Asooka
So how did that work out for you when the FCC decided to kill net neutrality?

~~~
xoa
> _So how did that work out for you when the FCC decided to kill net
> neutrality?_

Exactly as it’s supposed to? The Republicans have had eliminating Net
Neutrality as part of their platform since at least 2012, and are generally
hostile to consumer protection and the like in general. Conversely, the
Democrats have supported it, to the extent that Hillary Clinton made it an
explicit part of her technology platform. It’s right there on her website
still.

Even more then that, when the political coalitions were being formed, the
American people had every chance to influence what would go into each
coalition. America could have ensured that both supported it. They didn’t, so
instead we ended up with two very distinct coalitions on a range of issues,
with NN as one of them. The Republicans promised to scrap it. The Democrats
promised to keep and enforce it. America democratically voted to hand total
power for this cycle over Federal government to a single coalition, the
Republicans. There was no significant fraud whatsoever. There were no major
national emergencies causing disruption. The Republicans won and have
proceeded on policy just as they said they would (as expected, since most
politicians work to keep their campaign promises).

Please explain what in this doesn’t reflect “our will” as expressed by the
electorate? We all know how it works, what the dates are, etc. It’s easier now
to get information and organize and get involved then at any time in history.
If America had voted differently we’d have had a different result, simple as
that. It’s our government, we are not ruled by anything but a democracy. If we
don’t like the results it’s our responsibility to make it change.

------
phantom_oracle
This is a decent dummy introduction to what DAB is:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting)

> DAB is more efficient in its use of spectrum than analogue FM radio, and
> thus may offer more radio services for the same given bandwidth. DAB is more
> robust with regard to noise and multipath fading for mobile listening,[3]
> since DAB reception quality first degrades rapidly when the signal strength
> falls below a critical threshold, whereas FM reception quality degrades
> slowly with the decreasing signal.

~~~
dspig
That's funny. It should say FM is more robust, for exactly the same reason!

~~~
tinus_hn
DAB can handle receiving the signal from multiple broadcasting antennas on one
frequency (or reflections of the signal from one antenna), where with FM you
get interference.

So if the infrastructure is good using enough base stations you can get much
better coverage. That’s how it is more robust.

------
kawsper
I love listening to analog radio on my (now oldschool) iPod Nano 6th
generation, just enough technology to bring something new with featuring live-
pause so you can pause the radio.

~~~
stevekemp
Hell I'm building an FM radio as we speak - I'm literally just waiting for my
soldering iron to heat up and checking the internet.

Of course I'm making an IoT radio, which can be controlled via my PC, mobile,
or via buttons. But it still counts as old-school! ;)

~~~
jacquesm
Your own design or someone else's?

Schematics :) ?

~~~
stevekemp
My own design, no schematics as of yet.

If it means anything to you it is based around a TEA5767 FM-receiver module,
an ESP8266 device for controlling it (wemos mini d1), an 4x20 LCD display for
output and a small opamp for driving speakers.

Most of the project is in the software, the hardware bits are essentially
plugged-together with no specific design - except for the opamp.

------
Overtonwindow
I don't see why this was really necessary. It strikes me as the same move the
cable companies made, which was more for their benefit than the consumer.

~~~
pdelbarba
Digital takes up less bandwidth per channel than FM. This allows the
government to resell the frequency allocations. This is what happened with
analog broadcast TV in the US.

~~~
mcny
> Digital takes up less bandwidth per channel than FM. This allows the
> government to resell the frequency allocations. This is what happened with
> analog broadcast TV in the US.

I'd be all for it if it meant more of the spectrum went for unlicensed use
like 2.4GHz or 5GHz. Anyone know what happened to the white space thing?
Sounds like a really good thing.

~~~
reaperducer
In the U.S., the switch freed up frequencies that were used for cellular LTE
coverage.

Right now, the American TV stations are going through a second frequency shift
(called a re-pack). Everyone's being shoved into a smaller chunk of the
spectrum, made possible by the transition to digital.

Some stations are sharing channels. Others are being paid by the federal
government to go off the air entirely. The resulting frequencies will be
auctioned off to the wireless carriers for 5G data.

Re-packing has happened before, even in analog days. When I was a kid, analog
TV sets had channels up to 74. Then channels 70-74 were reassigned, my guess
is around the early 80's.

And if you go way way back, there used to be a channel one in the United
States, but it got reassigned, too. These things happen.

~~~
r3bl
> In the U.S., the switch freed up frequencies that were used for cellular LTE
> coverage.

My country (Bosnia & Herzegovina) _still_ hasn't introduced LTE because we
still didn't go through the entire process of switching to digital television.

In the local media, that means we're "the only ones in Europe", but I can't
find an external source to confirm that.

~~~
kalleboo
You don't _have_ to free up digital TV frequencies to introduce LTE. Many
European/Asian countries launched LTE on 2600 MHz before their digital
switchovers were completed, and others have recycled GSM/UMTS frequencies,
reducing the capacity/coverage of the legacy networks.

~~~
r3bl
I am most certainly aware of that, but that's the official reason according to
the government, that's the reason served in the media, and finally, that's the
reason mobile providers were given for not being able to serve LTE signal (two
out of three most popular mobile providers did the tests in most populous
cities half a decade ago).

------
bogomipz
>"Officials say the move to digital will save money"

Could someone explain the economics of how switching from FM to DAB saves
Noway money?

~~~
samhain
I found a link[1] that says that DAB is about 41x cheaper on slide 6... But
mostly because you can fit more stations on it.

[1] [http://www.gatesair.com/documents/slides/2015-09-Anderson-
Ad...](http://www.gatesair.com/documents/slides/2015-09-Anderson-Advanced-
Digital-Radio-HD-Radio-DRM-DAB-CDR.pdf)

~~~
bogomipz
Sure, that's economies of scale. Does Norway have that much demand for radio
where they would reach that?

------
number_six
Howlin' Mad Murphy?

[http://www.adultswim.com/videos/sealab-2021/howlin-mad-
murph...](http://www.adultswim.com/videos/sealab-2021/howlin-mad-murphy)

------
royandre
Norway switching of FM is one of the most stupid political decisions made in
the country in decades. And for God's sake, let's not let politicians make
technology decisions ever again.

~~~
joefarish
If that's true, you must be blessed with a fantastic group of politicians.

------
sandov
Is it easy to find free (as in freedom) DAB receivers?. Analog radio circuits
are easy to examine, but I suspect that DAB receivers must be impossible to
examine thoroughly for obvious reasons. There might be some security concerns
because of it. What have the Norwegian authorities said about that?.

------
jhallenworld
In the US, companies are dumping their analog assets.

Check out this video for the end of 100.3 FM "The Sound" in LA:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4uj2kBdfP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4uj2kBdfP8)

(look at the video description for related links, also the final moments of
The Sound is at the end of the video).

------
lexxed
We would need FM radio for the war against Skynet

