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DAB News in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland

Digital radio adoption will pick up in 2018

ROME � Italy�s RAI is deeming the expansion of DAB+ as more important after the government’s decision, included in the 2018 budget, mandating that all FM receivers sold after Jan. 1, 2019, must also be able to receive DAB. �With consumers who buy more and more [of this] new equipment…RAI could no longer afford to remain at the window, with a leopard-like coverage of the national territory,� according to ilnordestquotidiano.com.

In fact, a recent tender for the purchase of equipment for the distribution of content in RAI�s DAB+ appeared on the site of �RaiWay Suppliers.� It calls for 42 transmitters (fourrenewed and 38 new) with power ranging between 2.5 W and 1 kW to be activated in the years 2019-2019, providing coverage to Aosta, Piedmont, Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio and Campania.

The Flanders region of Belgium is going to speed up the digitization of radio. Minister of Media Sven Gatz will make additional capacity available on DAB + in 2018, according to radio.nl. Previously Gatz had said that by Sept. 1 the national radio stations in Flanders should be broadcasting via DAB+.

The Swiss Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications released an additional DAB + frequency block, on Dec. 20, for the German, French and Italian language regions of Switzerland, reports schwiezmagazine.ch.

The two new DAB+ radio licenses in German-speaking Switzerland and Ticino go to SwissMedia Cast AG. SMC is a company founded by various private radio broadcasters, SRG and Swisscom, for the construction and operation of DAB+ transmitter networks.�For German-speaking Switzerland, the SMC is planning another language-regional platform, in which 18 radio programs can be broadcast simultaneously. In the Ticino, the motorway service between the Gotthard and San Bernardino south portal and Chiasso will be assembled.�

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