Thanks. It is certainly notable down here on the South Coast that 3G coverage is excellent “at sea”, but poor in populated areas.

I live in Central Brighton and I get really good T-Mobile 3G/HSDPA coverage most of the time, but if I take a bus, say, over to Hove I the 3G drops out in the middle of Brighton at the Clock Tower, again at Palmeria Square and once again outside Hove Town Hall.

This is OK for the “background” tasks such as email notification, but totally useless for live radio listening where a substantial drop down to 2G means you miss part of the programme.

So, I have a little Asda DAB radio that works perfectly everywhere in the city – with one exception – inside Hollinbury Asda.

Incidentally, I found myself wondering “is DAB coverage any better”, so I found this:
http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/images/coverage-map.gif

The answer is, unsurprisingly, “yes”.

I just feel that this form of delivery is what people are increasingly demanding, and it’s up to government to provide the infrastructure that businesses, including media businesses, will live off over the coming decades. The road network was built for the 20th century, this century’s equivalent must be universal mobile data.

4Radio should have been a great leap forward for radio in this country but it fell over because the running costs were going to be too high and the DAB audience too low. We need one, universally available method if delivery, and mobile data has to be where it’s at. Every other option is too limited and anachronistic.

“I just feel that this form of delivery is what people are increasingly demanding”

For radio?

I can’t see anyone demanding a method of listening to the radio that is unreliable, uses chargeable bandwidth, won’t work in times of emergency, is only available on one receiver (the phone) instead of the 4+ that most households own, and that isn’t sensibly scalable.

I see people demanding a reliable, cheap, relatively high quality way of listening to radio in home and on the move. That’s achievable with broadcast radio – whether it’s FM or DAB. It’s not, actually, achievable with a mobile phone.

Mass-market radio needs broadcast, not one-to-one IP connections. Those ought to be used to provide niche content unavailable over a broadcast medium.

Posted the norwegian Telenor 3G map here: http://twitpic.com/4ggfrj
Turning off FM in 2017 or 2019.
Driving from Oslo to Bergen or Trondheim using 3G will be without coverage. DAB coverage with 14 services has been present on roads between Oslo and Trondheim since 2006.

I must admit the IP-radio-is-the-future brigade seem to have gone quite, ever since most networked started capping streaming data, what we do need is more DAD in handsets or DAB accessories, or even FM in handsets with a bit more thought.

I just got a HTC Desire HD, has a FM Radio but doesnt seem to even have RDS..

While the coverage with 3G might not be as good as it looks like in the UK, and what Sverre_E points out for Telenors 3G map in Norway – it could look like 3G might not be a solution for broadcast radio. Things are changing in Norway.

The Minister of Transport and Communications in Norway publised an interesting document april 5th about the future use of 800-900 MHz band in Norway for 2G-4G.

The document can be downloaded with this link http://tinyurl.com/4xe43wp (only in Norwegian).

Some interesting things what the norwegian goverment want from the renewed 900 MHz frequencies (and the 800 MHz digital dividend):
* 800-900 MHz can be bundled together to create high bandwith from each base station
* LTE should cover at least 97% of the population (later the minister stated they would love 100% coverage).
* Every user shall have minimum 2 MBit in their handsets

What the telcos have done so far:
Netcom and Telenor did a refarming of the 900 MHz band last year to prepare the band for 3G, it will be merged from Edge to 3G, so the 3G map Sverre_E points out will soon be as the Edge map…
* Both Telenor and Netcom have started their upgrade from Edge to 3G in the 900 MHz band
*Netcom is the first with LTE in Norway – and will change all their 900 antennas with 800/900 antennas (so they could cover Norway with LTE fast and easy)
* Fiber to every base station (20 % Telenor, 40% Netcom)

So the future can be might easier for 3G/4G across Norway. Just one interesting case: Telenor pointed out in an article by Telecom Revy that the bandwith usage is quite low in their cellphone network….