Introduction to Wi-Fi radios

Has the BBC been dishonest about the true cost of transmitting DAB?

Kelvin MacKenzie and Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture, Media & Sport Secretary, have both been quoted as saying that the BBC has told them that it will cost a total of £100m to build-out the BBC's national DAB multiplex so that it provides the same level of coverage as the BBC's FM stations do now, and the BBC's Director of Radio Tim Davie said the following on the subject of the costs involved in achieving digital switchover when he appeared on the Mediaguardian's Media Talk podcast:

However, figures from the BBC itself and from a BBC Trust report show that £50m - £100m would only be enough to cover the transmission costs for the BBC's national DAB multiplex for a year or two, so why is the BBC saying that it would only cost £50m - £100m in total? 

BBC's national DAB multiplex alone is estimated to cost £40m PER ANNUM

In December 2007, the BBC Trust published a report containing an independent audit of the BBC's use of spectrum, and on page 48 of the report it says that:

And in response to a Freedom of Information Act request that I sent in March 2008, the BBC itself also estimated that the cost of providing DAB coverage equivalent to that of its national FM stations would also be £40m per annum:

It was because of DAB's sky-high transmission costs that led Mark Friend, the BBC Controller in charge of digital radio, to say in 2007 that the cost of building new DAB transmitters was "prohibitively expensive", and that some parts of the UK were unlikely to ever receive DAB coverage. Why the complete U-turn now?

Keeping all FM stations on-air would only cost £10m per year

In comparison to the £40m per annum cost of transmitting the BBC's national DAB multiplex alone, the Digital Britain report said that it would only cost £200m to keep all of the FM stations on-air for the next 20 years, which only works out to be £10m per year:

Compared to DAB, FM is an absolute bargain to keep on-air.

Main reasons for DAB being forced upon the public against its will

The main reasons for the Digital Radio Downgrade are as follows:

• The BBC and commercial radio want to move everybody onto DAB as quickly as possible to stop Internet radio becoming successful, because the broadcasters are scared that they would lose listeners if Internet radio became the dominant platform for digital radio
• Commercial radio groups don't want to spend money transmitting both DAB and FM
• The Government will receive its cut of the several billion pounds spent on replacing the 120m - 150m FM devices in the form of tax

So the main reasons why the public is being asked to spend several hundred pounds replacing existing audio equipment are that the

Consumers could end up paying £5 - £7 billion to replace existing audio equipment -- purely for the benefit of the BBC and commercial radio

Radio tuners are included in many different forms of audio equipment, such as portable radios, hi-fi systems, hi-fi tuners, car stereos, portable stereos and alarm clocks -- and that isn't even including mobile phones or MP3 players that have an integrated FM radio. As an estimate, taking into consideration the fact that DAB receivers are likely to remain more expensive than FM receivers, I'd say that the average cost of replacing a piece of audio equipment would be in the region £40 - £50. Multiplying that figure by 120m - 150m, which is Ofcom's estimate of the number of FM devices currently in-use, the total cost of replacing all of the audio equipment would be in the region of £4.8 - £7.5 billion.

And what do consumers get for forking out several billion pounds? I would bet that the vast majority of people will simply continue to listen to exactly the same stations as they currently do on FM. And even after the reception quality on DAB has been improved, any listener that currently receives good reception quality on FM -- which would amount to tens of millions of people -- would actually have to listen to the same stations he does now, only the audio quality will be worse because the audio quality on DAB is poor. So tens of millions of people won't merely receive no benefit from spending several hundred pounds replacing FM equipment, they will actually receive a worse level of service from DAB -- and all this to help the broadcasters avoid losing listeners to Internet radio and to bail the broadcasters out so that they don't have to spend money on transmitting both DAB and FM.

Rip-Off Britain strikes again!

And in case anyone's under any illusions about the popularity of the decision to force the public to adopt DAB against its will, here's a quote from yesterday's Today programme on Radio 4:

Yep, everyone's ecstatic about being forced to buy DAB.

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