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The ‘FM death watch' thread...


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Old 24-10-2016, 19:31
hanssolo
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My understanding is that quite a few flagship smartphones actually have disabled FM chips in them...
NPR and other US stations have tried to get FM chips enabled, but mobile operators say the public prefer to download or stream music and radio (and it reduces their profits)
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechc...ou-cant-use-it
European broadcasters have instead been pushing Radioplayer, Tunein and other apps and with the LG phone hybrid radio where DAB and Internet work together under the Radioplayer app.

Norway will still have local FM if the national stations go digital next year. Bauer does seem concerned that there will be enough car DAB+ adaptors sold to keep its Radio Norway national audience.
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Old 24-10-2016, 19:44
lundavra
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Aren't disaster comms of the type being envisaged here usually provided by specialist branches of the military? I know that in Britain this task is handled by RAF mobile units. In times of emergency these trundle out, pull up the nearest manhole cover at their remote locations and connect what's left of the phone network into Skynet (the Brit military version, not Terminator...). It would make sense that these also provide local FM and DAB comms.

I would guess that the Norwegian armed services have similar contingency arrangements in place, with exact details not made public for obvious reasons. Hence the whole question of comms continuity should have no overlap with radio DSO.
If it is then it has been kept very secret.

There were TA units in the Royal Signals tasked to provide communications between various locations around the country but most of those have now gone, their 'mobile chip vans' have been sold off. They could be easily identified by their unit badges and certain phrases that tended to appear in the description of their function.

I get the impression that the government now believe the sales talk from mobile phone companies and have too much faith in them.
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Old 24-10-2016, 19:48
lundavra
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Main issues in an emergency are:

Mostly, FM radios are still the only one in cars

No DAB radios built into mobile phones, FM ones are in most Android handsets

Still rather short battery life of DAB radios, e.g. 10 hours on 4xAA batteries vs say 30 on FM, on a newish DAB/FM radio that I have.
And how many smartphones can run off AA batteries?

I don't think the original system told people to leave their radio on all the time, they would switch on a fixed times for updates. A box of AA batteries would enable them to do that for many weeks or longer and long after the smartphone battery has gone flat.
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Old 24-10-2016, 22:31
Vectorsum
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If it is then it has been kept very secret. There were TA units in the Royal Signals tasked to provide communications between various locations around the country but most of those have now gone...I get the impression that the government now believe the sales talk from mobile phone companies and have too much faith in them.
My late brother commanded one of the aforementioned mobile units, a fairly meaty artic's worth of kit, during his second tour with the RAF in the early '90s.

There would be no particular reason to make their function public but, if he felt easy enough to tell the tale to me, then it can't have been particularly secret either. In any case, the point to emphasise is how low-tech the whole approach was, particularly with just hooking into whatever might be left of the PSTN as a transmission path.

Crisis/major event comms can happily be provided by civvies, but in times of real disaster it would be impractical to keep the technologically complex networks of today on air without a full complement of staff. So I don't see why a list of DAB v FM tradeoffs is relevant in that scenario, when the military will already have stepped in on a 'best effort' basis.
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Old 26-11-2016, 12:21
hanssolo
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According to http://digitalradioinsider.blogspot....losure-in.html the Norwegian Centre party is trying to get a motion to postpone the start of the national FM switchoff.
"The Culture Committee will decide November 24, following debate and decision in Stortinget - the parliament - on December 6."
So far the decision of the committee has not been published as Norway radio continues with the 2017 plans.
http://radio.no/2015/04/norway-to-sw...ff-fm-in-2017/
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Old 02-01-2017, 20:29
DigMorris
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We're just a few days away from the first country to switch off its national FM infrastructure. The Norwegian media authority Medietilsynet has published this map to show which regions are going to be switched off when.

The Nordland region will kick off on 11 January, the last will be the regions Troms and Finnmark on 13 December.

Full announcement, and a video, at: http://www.medietilsynet.no/om/aktuelt/digitalradio/
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Old Yesterday, 22:59
Colin_London
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Story in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...shift-digital/
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Unread Today, 09:20
Inkblot
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The real question here is, what on earth is that picture at the top of the story?
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Unread Today, 10:00
buglawton
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And how many smartphones can run off AA batteries?

I don't think the original system told people to leave their radio on all the time, they would switch on a fixed times for updates. A box of AA batteries would enable them to do that for many weeks or longer and long after the smartphone battery has gone flat.
I have several USB phone charger battery banks at home, no problem keeping mobile phones going during a power cut. During a real emergency period (internet down and maybe mobile network over congested. Now where is that build-in DAB radio in the phone (which being an Android, does of course have an FM tuner).
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Unread Today, 10:11
Vectorsum
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The real question here is, what on earth is that picture at the top of the story?
It's the Torygraph's vision for a valve-operated in-car DAB adapter, complete with easy-on-the-eye operative to sit in the passenger's seat and tune the various grids to get the best signal while on the move.

If vinyl is on the up again, and wooden cabinets are making a comeback for DAB sets, there's no reason why a Brixton Briefcase with some glowing tubes won't fly in the Norwegian market, to convince the 66% nay-sayers to FM switchoff. Especially as it'll warm their cars in the morning.

And hoorah for Brexit and death to all Diesel drivers by the way, if their accompanying stories yesterday are to be believed...
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Unread Today, 10:18
dpb
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The real question here is, what on earth is that picture at the top of the story?
London 106 was a licence application in 1994

http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/1994/...ndon-licences/
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Unread Today, 10:50
lundavra
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I have several USB phone charger battery banks at home, no problem keeping mobile phones going during a power cut. During a real emergency period (internet down and maybe mobile network over congested. Now where is that build-in DAB radio in the phone (which being an Android, does of course have an FM tuner).
But will the mobile phone base stations be still running? I was told some time ago that most have only limited battery backup, basically to stop them crashing during a short break in power and even ones with batteries only had a "working day" capacity.

They had major problems when there was a long power outage in Kintyre a few years back because some utilities had got rid of their radio networks (which used to be diesel maintained) and gone over to using mobile phones.
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Unread Today, 10:51
lundavra
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The real question here is, what on earth is that picture at the top of the story?
Someone has just looked up a library image of "person with portable radio".
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