10 years after the start of the DAB + digital radio, a steadily growing range is also attracting private radio stations to the digital program bouquets.
Ten years after the start of the DAB + digital radio in Germany, more than ten million households in Germany are equipped with a suitable receiver.
This means that over a quarter of households can now listen to the radio via digital reception, as the Digital Radio Office Germany announced on the anniversary of the start of broadcasting on August 1, 2011. The exact figures for 2021 will be published in September in the digitization report of the media companies.
DAB + is the second attempt to digitize radio in Germany: first attempts at digitization in the 1990s with digital audio broadcasting (DAB) hardly convinced people in Germany, also because only those stations could be heard on DAB radio that were already in could receive decent quality via FM. The digital radio therefore bobbed around for years. The improved DAB + technology was only introduced at IFA 2011 at the urging of the Commission to Determine the Financial Requirements of Broadcasters (KEF). DAB + uses the innovative AAC coding method, which was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute and is now used worldwide for music services such as iTunes and Spotify.
In 2013, two years after the start of DAB +, almost 1.8 million households in Germany were equipped with DAB + devices. This year the threshold of ten million households will be exceeded for the first time. “On our 10th anniversary, we are pleased to note that DAB + has arrived on the market and it has become indispensable,” said the Rhineland-Palatinate State Secretary for Media and Digital and Coordinator of the State Broadcasting Commission, Heike Raab. The task now is to enable everyone to receive DAB + while at the same time creating a generally accepted transition from VHF to DAB + for the organizers.
The greater interest in DAB + also has to do with the variety of programs, which has expanded considerably since it was launched ten years ago. At the start of 2011, 14 programs were broadcast digitally across the whole of Germany. With a second program platform, up to 29 stations can now be received nationwide via DAB +. There are also many regional and local stations, 71 in Bavaria alone.
With the increased range and the lower technical transmission costs compared to VHF, DAB + is also becoming increasingly interesting for private radio broadcasters. The second nationwide platform (“Bundesmux”) is operated by the “Antenne Deutschland” consortium. The digital state minister in the Federal Chancellery, Dorothee Bär (CSU), referred to the national marketing opportunities for private radio as well: “The federal government can provide support within the scope of its responsibility for frequency policy and bring together the federal, state and media actors. I would like to see even more courage and, above all, more optimism from all those involved with regard to the programs and market opportunities. ”
The Digitalradio Büro Deutschland, a joint initiative of ARD, Deutschlandradio, private radio broadcasters, device manufacturers and network operators, further pointed out on Friday that DAB + is the most environmentally friendly and sustainable form of radio due to its low power consumption. Thanks to a technical innovation by the Fraunhofer Institute, DAB + can now become an important factor in civil protection: With the help of the Electronic Warning Function (EWF), DAB + radios are intended to enable the population to be warned quickly and reliably in the event of a disaster.
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