Struble: ‘We’re Committed to AM’

Ibiquity President/CEO Bob Struble told a meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in Washington that the company is “100 percent committed to AM.”
This was in response to questions about the status of AM IBOC nighttime testing. FCC commissioners voted Thursday to select IBOC as the digital standard in the United States. While FMs are authorized to run both analog and digital signals day and night, AM IBOC service will be restricted at first to daytime, due to interference concerns.
Ibiquity hopes to be done with its AM IBOC nighttime tests by the end of the year and turn over the data gathered in those tests to the National Radio Systems Committee by year-end. Struble expects the FCC will include both day and night operating parameters for AM and FM in the final standard.
Commission staff say it’s too soon to predict when final IBOC rules, including a technical standard, will be out, other than to say sometime in 2003.
In the meantime, Ibiquity expects 10 receiver manufacturers to display IBOC radios at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Approximately 190 people attended this year’s IEEE meeting.