Digital radio an opportunity to achieve connectivity

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said digital radio provides a unique opportunity to public as well as private broadcasters to carry forward the vision of the Prime Minister to achieve a "digital and connectivity revolution" in the country.
Addressing the gathering at the 'Digital Radio for All Round Table Conference', organised by the Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), along with the Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), Naidu said digital radio would provide the listeners with a significantly improved audio quality and service reliability at an affordable price.
The conference was organised to stimulate the interests of the key Indian stakeholders in the public phase launch of the project to digitise radio in India, following the successful installation of DRM digital radio transmitters by All India Radio (AIR).

The Union minister said it was an opportune moment for automobile manufacturers and retailers to install digital radio in vehicles which would provide an impetus to this new technology.
Digital radio would benefit all the stakeholders, including the listeners, manufacturers, broadcasters and regulators, he added.
Regarding AIR's achievements in adopting the digital radio technology, Naidu said the public broadcaster has already completed the process of technical installation and upgradation of 37 powerful transmitters in the first phase of digitisation of radio broadcasting.
"This would ensure a reduced power consumption for all digital transmissions, cutting down a significant cost for AIR as well as the taxpayers in the future. AIR has re-invented itself through its digital transmitters, based on the international ITU standard Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM)," he added.

The DRM broadcasting system is specifically designed to allow the new digital transmission system to co-exist with the current analogue broadcasts.