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FM Band in Italy: Why So Crowded?
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Here's one question that's been bugging me for a long time and I couldn't find a straightforward answer online: why is the FM band in Italy so crowded? Rome alone has 83:o FM frequencies being used in the area (I guess the Italians have very good tuners in their radios:p).
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Virtually zero regulation, and no effort to pursue pirates, result
the mess you witnessed.
Makes you wonder how many of those stations are legitimately licensed and how many are pirates:D Also, when did Italy switch to standard .1 Mhz tuning steps? I seem to remember them using .05Mhz (88.35, 101.45, etc.)frequencies years back.
Although we wouldn't want to be like in Rome, it just shows how over regulated we are here in the UK, in particular the FM spectrum has been very badly managed right across the UK over the years. With decent management of the spectrum there would be room for many many more FM stations right across the UK and in London.
Considering the listener for a moment instead of the share holders, brand addicts and rich kids that want a radio "network" to play with, the Italian radio situation, like some other EU countries can only be a good thing. Lots of choice. Sadly Ofcom and frequency planning are not words that go well together!
On the other hand, in the UK we have major cities like London where, despite heavy regulation and anti-pirate enforcement, the legal stations are still outnumbered by illegal ones.
I know, but outside London that's not the case, is it ?
There has to be proper control of frequencies. Despite fines in London there are still pirate stations on FM, some with RDS id!
Any relaxation of these rules will be opposed by existing stations until a DSO which is years away, but means a lack of frequencies for new stations, and also low power pirates are using the gaps, especially in London.
The key thing is the difference in signal strength between channels, and tolerances vary depending on how close together the channels are. For example, if stations are 300kHz apart, then OFCOM usually consider only the stronger one to be available in an area.
In the UK we still adhere fairly fiercely to the old ITU standards, based on the performance of radios back in the 1970s; in most of Europe they've been relaxed a bit.
In Italy standards were never even considered, once commercial radio was legalised without setting up a functioning regulator.
Basically it was anarchy until about 1992, when there was a "census". Since then anything new being set up without permission is considered "pirate", and they actually do shut them down.
However, there are still two routes for new frequencies to be activated: (1) by being licenced by the parish council for coverage of a "mountain community", using up to 100W or (2) by being a station entitled by law to national coverage. All stations entitled by law except Radio Padania Libera (right wing political) already have very nearly national coverage. In recent years RPL has made money to fund its political party by activating transmitters and immediately selling them (usually to stations whose news coverage is sympathetic to their cause), which has made the law something of a laughing stock.
The 50kHz spacings still exist in parts of Italy - they're gradually disappearing as individual operators try to get rid of them - they're undesirable from a commercial point of view since they cause problems with RDS. There are quite a few odd spacings still - e.g. 99.78 usually squeaks into the filter of a radio tuned to 99.8 but won't cause as much interference to a nearby station on 100.0.
From the DSO discussions there seems to be plenty of early FM radios from the 70s with poor selectivity still working and if an FM replan was done would cause these sets difficulties? I presume in places like Italy these old non selective sets would have been thrown out by now?
I must have bought, broken and thrown away at least half a dozen radios since the 1970s and I'm sure most other people are the same. Some of them performed badly on FM - which is why we replaced them - but there were so few stations on FM back then, and all of them were duplicated on AM. It seems nuts to base a frequency allocation policy on the specifications of radios which should have been, and probably were, chucked in the bin forty years ago. The exception would be some of the very good FM stereo tuners that were made in the past, which traded off worse sensitivity and selectivity for excellent sound quality. But you wouldn't want to use them to listen to today's overprocessed FM stations anyway.
There some FM tuners from the 70s that not only sound fantastic but have great sensitivity & selectivity, like the Yamaha T-2. They quote a selectivity of 100 dB at +/- 400 kHz, which is better than any other tuner they did, and it would be more than adequate for any normal listener in a location with a busy FM band.
I know you were moaning about the awful sound quality of XFM in another thread but BBC radio can sound stunning with a decent tuner: e.g. for Radio 2 you have Jamie Cullum, Mark Radcliffe, and 'Sounds Of The 60s' being good examples, 'Late Junction' on Radio 3, and Radio 4's plays and dramas. Not all FM is overprocessed sh*te.
That's interesting. In Fife there is an exception to that rule.
Radio 4 on 95.8 from Blackhill (250Kw) and Kingdom FM on 96.1 from Purin Hill (500w). The Purin Hill site can be seen from miles around and on a good day you can see the Blackhill mast from Purin Hill.
Indeed, Ofcom has such a stranglehold on radio here it stifles the medium, in my opinion.
Virtually all destinations I've been to in Europe over the years have dozens of stations of every genre all over the band and with scrolling text too. We have scrolling text on FM but it only appears on DAB/FM radios for some reason.
Salou in Spain and Alcúdia in Majorca (my last couple of holiday destinations) were also pretty good.
No need for DAB in those countries, in my opinion.
Back in Belfast a measly 9 stations with a handful of long term community services, some of which leave a lot to be desired.
I don't think the ROI fares much better although greater Dublin is a bit better than here.
Ofcom have a lot to answer for, in my opinion.
I read recently that Barcelona has over 140 FM stations
http://radiomap.eu/es/barcelona
Or try Turin
http://radiomap.eu/it/torino
Paris?
http://radiomap.eu/fr/paris
Then of course there's that big city of London
http://radiomap.eu/uk/london
Wow! ?
It's all to do with general interest and demand more than anything. Shame really because a lot of people have access to FM radio, it's not too bad quality and it's cheaper than digital.
As digital takes it's grip more analogue frequencies will be freed up. However I thought Italy not only has DAB but also DAB+ yet FM remains popular as well?
http://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.412-9-199812-I!!PDF-E.pdf
In fact the rules will allow the use of a 300kHz spacing so long as there is nowhere populated in the Radio 4 95.8 coverage area where Kingdom on 96.1 is more than 7dB stronger than Radio 4.
That's a tough ask unless the transmitters are co-located (which OFCOM disallow at 300kHz, unlike most of Europe), but they must have done it somehow in Glenrothes. Either that or Glenrothes officially receives the BBC from Forfar, not Black Hill, and so the signal from Black Hill wouldn't be protected.
In practice all this is a bit academic because 99% of radios actually in use outperform the standards by a country mile, which is why most of Europe uses far less stringent rules...
In terms of the range of stations with actually decent reception in the city centre area, Barcelona is close to or a bit behind Paris, I'd say. Paris is streets ahead in terms of variety, though, I think because a lot of the stations are non-profits.
I believe it relies on a commercial TV operator deciding to flip their interference-ridden VHF Band III TV channel to interference-ridden DAB radio.
But it could do well, I think, if the government get their act together and co-ordinate things a little. The FM interference in some areas in Italy makes listening fairly difficult.
On which principle London should have over 200 FM stations. It has about 20.
I really should have bookmarked that site as the league table was an interesting read. I've tried looking through my history but can't find it.
I'm sure the UK radio industry would have looked very different today if back in the 1970s or 1980s dozens of FM licences for every major city had suddenly been dropped on the semi-developed radio industry (as happened in France), instead of the ILR system of local monopolies.