France currently testing DAB+ & DRM+

26th January 2007

Following authorisation from the French communications regulator, the CSA, a Band III DAB+ trial is currently being held in Paris, along with a trial of DRM at 26 MHz in Lyon and a DRM+ trial in Band I (below the FM band, which is Band II).

However, the trial only seems to be a "pseudo-DAB+" trial, because the signal being transmitted is not DAB+, and nor are the receivers being used DAB+-enabled!

What seems to be happening is that the transmission company operating the multiplex is transmitting services using the T-DMB standard and it is using T-DMB receivers as well. T-DMB is a DAB-based system that was designed to enable mobile TV that can also carry radio stations, and T-DMB is identical to DAB+ in terms of the technologies it uses (e.g. like DAB+, it adds the AAC+ audio codec and Reed-Solomon coding to the old version of DAB), but crucially, T-DMB and DAB+ are incompatible with each other, because T-DMB has adopted the MPEG-2 Transport Stream, whereas DAB+ is using a different transport layer.

It is believed that the transmission company operating the Paris trial, VDL Diffusion, favours using T-DMB, because the company sells T-DMB equipment, so it would prefer that the broadcasters would buy its own equipment rather than buying DAB+ equipment from other companies. And if VDL Diffusion gets its way then France would be going it alone with using T-DMB for carrying digital radio, because it is strongly expected that the rest of Europe will adopt eventually adopt DAB+ for carrying digital radio.

VDL Diffusion was also one of the most vociferous proponents of DAB sticking with the inefficient MP2 audio codec rather than adopting AAC+, because the far lower efficiency of MP2 would have resulted in the broadcasters having to pay around 3 times as much money in transmission costs as they would do with AAC+ due to the higher number of multiplexes that would have been needed to carry a certain number of radio stations. Thankfully, VDL Diffusion didn't get its way, and DAB has now adopted AAC+, but it still seems that the company wants to selfishly burden the country with a poor digital radio migration strategy so that it can make extra profit at the expense of what is right for the French public and broadcasters.

France probably will still adopt DAB+, but if it does adopt T-DMB for digital radio then it will be making a huge mistake. The main reason why France would be making a mistake in going it alone with T-DMB is that there are virtually no T-DMB receivers designed specifically for listening to the radio on (i.e. portable radios, micro systems, hi-fi tuners, CD portable stereos, clock radios, personal radios etc), whereas there are over 200 DAB receiver models available in the UK that are designed for radio listening, and within the next 12 - 15 months it is likely that there will be a similar number of models that support DAB+ (i.e. the modules in existing receivers will be switched to modules that support DAB+ and other new models will arrive).

This lack of availability of T-DMB receivers designed for radio listening (the only T-DMB receivers available are mobile phones and PDA type receivers) would be a problem for France because the selling price of consumer electronics products is highly dependent on the sales volume of the product — the higher the sales volume the higher the manufacturing batch sizes can be, which reduces the manufacturing cost per unit, which reduces the selling price in the shops, and vice versa. And if France goes it alone with T-DMB then it would have to start from zero sales of such receivers, which would mean that the price of these receivers in the shops will inevitably be high.

Basically, this would put France in the same position as the UK was in around 5 years ago, because there will be almost zero public awareness of digital radio in France (because there is no digital radio service to speak of there) and the T-DMB receiver prices in the shops would be very high. The only way the UK circumvented this situation was by the BBC broadcasting a total of 19 very high impact TV advertising campaigns for DAB, and there being a similar number of advertising campaigns on commercial radio.

If, on the other hand, France adopted DAB+ then they would be able to ship-in DAB+ receivers which they would be able to sell in the shops at similarly low prices to in the UK, because the sales volumes would be high, and this in turn would obviously make consumers far more likely to purchase the radios, and uptake of digital radio would be much higher than if T-DMB were adopted.