The Broadcaster Traffic Consortium plans to expand its footprint and, possibly, the number of contributing radio broadcast organizations.
President Paul Brenner told Radio World the group has agreed to expand again, up to 24 radio groups by the middle of next year, and covering more than 100 cities.
“I cannot tell you who will join yet,” he told Radio World, “but I can tell you that at least existing BTC members are increasing their station commitment to grow our coverage. We are responding to device and automaker demands for more HD Radio coverage and preparing for more product releases in 2013.”
The BTC was founded six years ago. It consists of broadcast groups that connected their infrastructure to create a network to distribute data via terrestrial FM and HD Radio signals. The Nokia Location and Commerce division provides the data about traffic, weather and fuel prices.
It started as eight broadcast groups and about 100 stations in 50 cities. Membership is currently 20 commercial and noncommercial radio organizations representing about 1,500 FM stations, more than half of them digital, and U.S. and Canadian stations are active with BTC serving approximately 90 North American markets.
Brenner said that some 12 million devices in the market rely on BTC-delivered signals, a number that is growing by approximately 1 to 2 million devices a year.
