Ro,
Thanks for putting the new GRTS Digital FM station in its proper perspective.
Mohinder wrote:
"Even though Simulcast transmission was to be used the arguement for justifying it (thus adding to recurring costs) in the present time would not be a sensible proposition."
No, Mohinder. What has happened in this case is that Radio France International (RFI) paid for the equipment, installation as well as the training of some GRTS staff. Under the same deal, RFI would be providing an annual subvention of 13,000 Euros for the purchase of spare parts and the general upkeep of the station as well as some local production costs.
There are a total of three transmitters. One for RFI, most of whose programmes would be downlinked via satelite from France. The second transmitter is to be used by GRTS for COMMERCIAL broadcasts. The third transmitter is to be used as a back-up for either of the other two transmitters.
GRTS is broadcasting on 89 Mhz and RFI is broadcasting on 98.6 Mhz. From what I have observed so far, this second GRTS FM station is not even linking with the National station for the news. It is only playing music and running advertisements. Occasionally the broadcast their own version of the national and international news, but these far and between.
For those who are interested to know about Digital Audio Broadcasts (DABs), here is an article by John Anderson entitled "Going Digital - The End of Radio As We Know IT".
Going Digital: The End Of Radio As We Know It
Digital radio is coming to America - and when it arrives, it may signal the death of the medium as we've known it.
For the first time in modern communications history, there's a distinct possibility that an entire form of media may make itself obsolete by the transformation from analog to digital. Broadcasters are wholeheartedly supporting the transition anyway.
That's because the value in a radio station isn't in what it plays over the air. The real value of any radio station is in the frequency it occupies.
From listening to the radio industry, you'd think Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) was the best thing since FM. Lofty promises have been made about vast improvements in sound quality over today's analog radio signals.
Digital radio will revolutionize the medium, all right. Just not in the way we're being led to believe.
Field tests of the DAB system and more publicly-known details about how it works point more toward DAB as a ploy to expand a radio station's spectrum real estate - not about making radio itself any better.
As we tell this tale, here's a couple major points to remember: unlike most of the rest of the world, who adopted a digital radio standard that calls for stations to move to a whole new band on the spectrum, America's broadcast industry lobbied for a technology called In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) DAB.
The U.S. television industry has also slowly been "going digital" over the last few years; all TV stations have had to move a new "digital frequency." But with IBOC, radio stations won't leave their familiar spots on the AM or FM dial.
An analog radio channel on the FM band in the U.S. is 200 KHz wide. This is why station dial positions end only in odd numbers (88.1, 90.3, 91.5, 94.7, 103.9, etc.). This was done initially to keep stations a certain number of spots away from each other on the dial, so they didn't interfere with each other.
However, the IBOC-DAB system of digital radio calls for 430 KHz of bandwidth to be used - in effect, when radio stations go digital, they will double the space they take up on the dial.
There are significant issues to consider when doubling the space on the dial for each new digital radio station. One of the primary issues involves interference.
If radio stations "fatten" their signals, closely-spaced and smaller-power stations might get drowned out on the dial by higher-wattage "neighbors."
Real-world tests of IBOC broadcasts in Virginia in 2000 produced harmful interference to other radio stations spaced near a digital "guinea pig" on the FM dial. Recordings of this interference are available online; it sounds, basically, like a buzzsaw cutting through a nearby station's signal.
If this is not bad enough, the broadcast industry cannot promise that near-CD-quality sound, either.
In fact, a recent article in Current magazine (a publication for the public radio "industry") contained a stunning admission: "(The) IBOC model flanks a station's analog signal with two low-level digital signals."
In fringe areas, or where interference is a problem, a station's signal will default to analog - the same old technology used today.
Which brings us to this question: why does digital radio require twice the bandwidth, if the signal you'll hear won't actually be any different?
Backers of IBOC-DAB point to the potential of "value-added" services being piggy-backed onto a radio signal. You'll be able to access song information and traffic and weather reports on your new digital radio display.
This, however, could be considered pocket change in comparison to another technology in the works. This "value-added service" could actually turn radio stations into internet service providers - a far cry from their original mission as broadcasters.
Here's the scenario: a radio station will run some sort of nominal, canned format, using the least amount of DAB bandwidth possible out of its 400 KHz chunk. The rest of its channel bandwidth will be devoted to people surfing the 'net - like having a cable or DSL modem without the wires.
Some Insight into Simulcasting.
Another area where simulcasting is making waves is the use of Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) and Assymetrical DSL. DSL is a high speed connection that uses the same pairs of wires of your ordinary telephone line. Some advantages of DSL are:
But there are disadvantages too:
The copper wires have lots of room for carrying more than your phone conversations -- they are capable of handling a much greater bandwidth, or range of frequencies, than that demanded for voice. DSL exploits this "extra capacity" to carry information on the wire without disturbing the line's ability to carry conversations. The entire plan is based on matching particular frequencies to specific tasks.
For more on DSL and ADSL, here is an article by Curt Franklin. Please enjoy.
Have a good day, Gassa.
How DSL works by Curt Frankiln
To understand DSL, you first need to know a couple of things about a normal telephone line -- the kind that telephone professionals call POTS, for Plain Old Telephone Service. One of the ways that POTS makes the most of the telephone company's wires and equipment is by limiting the frequencies that the switches, telephones and other equipment will carry. Human voices, speaking in normal conversational tones, can be carried in a frequency range of 0 to 3,400 Hertz (cycles per second). This range of frequencies is tiny. For example, compare this to the range of most stereo speakers, which cover from roughly 20 Hertz to 20,000 Hertz. And the wires themselves have the potential to handle frequencies up to several million Hertz in most cases. The use of such a small portion of the wire's total bandwidth is historical -- remember that the telephone system has been in place, using a pair of copper wires to each home, for about a century. By limiting the frequencies carried over the lines, the telephone system can pack lots of wires into a very small space without worrying about interference between lines. Modern equipment that sends digital rather than analog data can safely use much more of the telephone line's capacity. DSL does just that.
Most homes and small business users are connected to an asymmetric DSL (ADSL) line. ADSL divides up the available frequencies in a line on the assumption that most Internet users look at, or download, much more information than they send, or upload. Under this assumption, if the connection speed from the Internet to the user is three to four times faster than the connection from the user back to the Internet, then the user will see the most benefit (most of the time).