Ofcom criticises France for not allowing use of DAB+

France is planning to mandate the use of the T-DMB system for its digital radio system even though T-DMB was designed to carry mobile TV channels rather than radio stations, and Ofcom has sent a document to the French authorities criticising France's decision because it is concerned that it "will in practice prevent other standards from being used in France, affecting both French consumers as well as consumers from other EU countries"; that receivers will need to be produced that can decode audio and video when obviously only audio is required for a radio station; and that the use of T-DMB when DAB+ was expected to be used across Europe will reduce economies of scale for the manufacturers, leading to both DAB+ and T-DMB receivers being more expensive as a result. One additional negative thing about mandating the use of T-DMB that Ofcom didn't mention is that as all radio stations would have an attached video stream (it's only low frame rate, so it's not true video) this will increase the power consumption of receivers unnecessarily. Other reasons why France adopting DMB is a bad idea is that it is inefficient compared to DAB+ and that it doesn't support all the features you would expect from a digital radio system. Some have likened France adopting T-DMB to France going it alone and adopting the SECAM system for analogue TV instead of falling into line with other European countries and adopting the PAL system.

Ofcom's preferred approach

The following is a quote from the Ofcom document detailing their preferred approach:

and they suggest that it would be preferable to allow DAB+ services to be broadcast alongside DMB services in the same multiplex, as this would providing the following advantages:

DMB vs DAB+

The DAB+ and DMB standards are virtually identical apart from the fact that DMB requires a video stream to be transmitted alongside each audio stream, whereas DAB+ was specifically designed to carry audio streams. So as they're so similar it is possible for the same receiver modules to support both DAB+ and DMB, and the DAB receiver module companies (Frontier-Silicon and Radioscape) are planning to support DMB as well as DAB+ for modules being sold in France. Therefore, sales of DMB receivers in France will help with the economies of scale for DAB+ modules, which will reduce DAB+ receiver prices to a certain extent.

However, the fragmentation of the receiver market will lead to a lack of economies of scale, which will keep DAB+ receiver prices higher than they would have been, and DMB receiver prices in France will be very high at first because there will be zero volume due to their digital radio service being launched from scratch -- I'm afraid it serves them right that their receiver prices will be so high if they're going to ignore everybody else and go it alone...