Bavaria adopts DAB+

Bavaria, which is the largest German region (or 'laender'), has adopted DAB+, which makes it likely that the rest of Germany will also adopt DAB+, because DAB sales have been slow in Germany up to now.

The Bavarian regulator, the BLM, has extended the DAB licences for the commercial radio stations, and quoting from the article on 22nd March on the Wohnort DAB website, the BLM has proposed that:

So the BLM is even providing incentives to the commercial radio stations to use AAC+.

Bavaria has up to now been the biggest supporter of the old DAB system in Germany, so the significance of Bavaria adopting DAB+ cannot be underestimated. And now that Bavaria is adopting DAB+, it is expected that the Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz and Nordrhein-Westfalen laender on the border with France will follow Bavaria's lead shortly, and the more DAB-agnostic northern German laender likely to follow them.

Also, the reason why the northern German laender weren't too keen on using DAB was due to it being such an outdated and inefficient system, so as DAB+ is a huge improvement over the old DAB system in this regard then it's likely they'll embrace DAB+. 

And if Germany as a whole adopts DAB+ then it is likely that numerous other countries that are currently considering DAB+ will take the plunge.