U.K. Abandons Plan to Switch Off Analog Radio in 2015
The U.K. government abandoned its plan to switch off analog radio in 2015, and will guardedly hope for 2020 as a hard date. Communications Minister Ed Vaizey made that admission Monday at the Go Digital conference organized by industry body Digital Radio U.K. and held at the BBC’s London headquarters.
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The same conference saw digital radio chip suppliers Imagination Technologies and Frontier Silicon jointly announce a small-size, low-cost single “global superchip” that can handle any of the digital radio standards used anywhere in the world, along with legacy AM and FM. Power consumption matches an FM chip, making the global chip suitable for use in a smartphone, they said.
"We have to bring the listener with us,” Vaizey said, explaining the government’s change of position on the digital radio switchover. “We can’t wave a magic wand and make it happen. We set ourselves a series of benchmarks.” Digital listening needs to be at 50 percent penetration, but is currently only 35.6 percent, he said. “Coverage needs to match FM coverage for all stations moving from analog. We are not there yet. So now is not the time to switch over."
We earlier asked Vaizey whether he considered adopting the U.S. DTV switchover policy of offering coupons to help listeners make the change. “No work has yet been done on that,” he said. “We will look at it as we get close. We first want to provide the opportunity to convert."
As for the global superchip, “there is nothing it doesn’t do,” including HD Radio in the U.S., Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination Technologies, told us. “The hardware is ready and it will work in mobiles. It can be in products within 12 months. We are doers, not talkers. You will not find a standard that this chip doesn’t do."
Anthony Sethill, CEO at Frontier Silicon, said converting Imagination’s design to silicon had taken two years and cost $10 million. Finished samples will go to radio manufacturers in two-three months, he said. The chip provides a unified service list of all broadcasts or all formats available for reception, he said.
Power consumption for a DAB chipset 10 years ago was 700-800 milliwatts, Sethill said. Now it’s down to 70 milliwatts with the radio fully on, he said. Although Sethill was cagey over price, he confirmed “$5 or $6 is the ballpark, depending on volume.”