Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Analogue Switch-Off
According to the BBC, the analogue radio switch-off nears.
The report claims that 600,000 digital receivers have been sold in the UK, and switching off the analogue signal would render some 100 million existing sets obsolete.
So, er, why on earth are they even considering switching off the analogue signal at this point?
(Confession: I listen to radio at home by tuning into the BBC’s live and Listen Again streams online, or playing recordings made using iRecordMusic, then broadcasting FM from my computer via a Belkin TuneCast, to a Tivoli Model One analogue mono receiver. Does anyone know of a support group I could contact?)
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‘cos we need to bandwith for 3G mobile phones etc.
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That’s my point - freeing up a bit of bandwidth for a few early adopters at the expense of tens of millions of radio users just seems plain stupid.
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Perhaps you’re forgetting how much that bandwidth can be auctioned off for? And it won’t be widely adopted until the bandwidth is available, which makes yours a bit of a chicken and egg argument.
It’s got to be at least 10 years off though, don’t you think?
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Your right, I’m chicken egging there…
But after the fiasco of the last auction of chunks of the radio spectrum (er, probably not the right words) I’d be surprised if the mobile companies would be so willing to punt millions in the government’s direction.
I hope it’s ten years off, at least - I’m not prepared to face a world without ‘proper’ radio. Listening to the cricket without LW crackle and pop just wouldn’t be right, for one thing…
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When buying a new car how many these days are being sold with a digital radio, I suspect that we will all have to purchase additional equipment at vastly extortionate prices but nobody from the car industry is saying anything……
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