James,

It really, really bugs me when people (say, Guardian Media Talk or BBC Backstage contributors) say “oh, we can listen to the radio on the internet we don’t need DAB” because this just is a total failure to understand that one of the big benefits of “broadcast” over “peer-to-peer” networks is that they can serve a lot of people with the same content.

It works the same way the other way around. All that interactive TV (ie, red button) services can manage to do is allow you to “select from what’s there”. You can navigate between a number of broadcasts, or select some text from a broadcast carousel, but you can’t get peer-to-peer, because the uni-directional nature of broadcast won’t let you.

If you are trying to serve hundreds of people with identical synchronous content then broadcast is the best way to serve broadcasts. It is convenient to have internet radio, but it is never possible to serve hundreds, thousands and millions of people this way with the mobile telephone networks.

And I think we should not try either. Why jam up the peer-to-peer networks, that we need to get “our content” with data that can be put on an efficient broadcast network.

So, as I posted before:

DAB’s problem is that it falls between two many posts. There is choice over FM/AM, but now mainly of BBC stations, plus Planet Rock.

The sound quality isn’t better. Mobile reception is worse. Coverage is worse. The choice of sets is very limited still – the only mobile phone with DAB was the Virgin Mobile Lobster, now dead.

Freeview and satellite provide a much better listening experience for all radio channels over DAB. RDS still trumps DAB for auto tuning and the “traffic programme” service.

And, as the BBC launched DAB before MPEG2 was ratified, there is no easy path to DAB+.

And there is no “digital radio switchover” date to focus minds of both broadcasters and consumers.

In the end DAB is a technology looking for a solution, not the answer to consumers prayers.

If you were to ask people what they wanted from digital radio, I am sure they would want:

1) Universal coverage better than FM and AM combined (as it is to replace both);

2) More choice of stations and formats in both local and national configurations;

3) Cheaper than analogue radio to buy;

4) Integration into the music player you use (iPod, MP3 player or mobile phone)

5) Good indoor reception on above portable devices including in car and on trains and even the underground;

6) Sound quality to match or better FM for all services;

7) PVR facilities: live pause, instant record and EPG recording;
Automatic traffic information as per RDS

9) All of the above today.

Let’s face it, DAB as it stands now falls short on almost all of these.

Audiophiles hate DAB because the sound quality is poor and there are no “separates” out there, and the casual user gets a device with an interface that resembles that of a broken ZX81.

The answer is therefore:

a) move to DAB+ asap;

b) the BBC to build out the network in the UK to give proper DAB coverage. In particular, someone needs to drive around the motorway and main road network and make sure it works flawlessly on every inch. Ditto the rail network.

c) An “underground” solution would be great too for the London Underground and other networks like that;

d) The BBC should provide the technical broadcast services for the national multiplexes;

e) Someone needs to say that FM and AM will be turned off.

Another idea, possibly too controversial, is to just forget about DAB and use DVB-H to deliver the radio content…

As for your original question, is anyone doing this? Yup, every single day. My commute in the morning is about an hour and I listen to several different radio stations on my way into the city. At present I have a 3G connection the whole way (with one dead zone inside a park) so there is very little on the Internet radio tuner programs (which are mostly shoutcast based) that I cannot listen to. I get a quasi-pirate feed of the BBC World Service but haven’t gotten any UK-based BBC stations here in the US (the iPlayer is finicky about geography, though I haven’t tried in a month or two to be honest).

Though, like a lot of iPhone users, I find Pandora or podcasts to be more interesting that most radio.

One of the neat things is that many police scanners are online in the US, so I can switch my iphone/car radio to the police channel as I’m driving through their speed traps.

I listen to RTE radio quite regularly on my iPhone on my way in to W12 (my commute is entirely overground). It’s not perfect, but dropouts are rare enough to make it doable.

Hi James,

As far as I understand it, when you are “handed off” between transmitters with a 3g/edge/gprs connection (or change connection type depending upon signal strength) your IP address doesn’t change as it is the underlying transport mechanism that is doing the work. IP (the protocol running over the transport mechanism) is largely unaffected other than in the obvious ways – latency between losing one connection and gaining another, connection speed variations as time moves on, etc, etc.

Mobile-ready apps are designed to cope with these issues and generally work pretty well (e.g. mobile web browsers being able to maintain a session even though the underlying transport mechanism isn’t always there – notice the “temporarily disconnected” icon when you’re browsing the web on your phone but there’s no mobile signal).

One possible solution for audio is to use a media player that has a (very) large buffer, so that playback is less prone to dropouts due to a temporary loss of transport or change to a very low connection speed. I’m sure it’s not quite this simple as the solution would have to cope with issues like the signal/connection speed not returning to a satisfactory level prior to the buffer running out, but you get the general idea.

The ultimate limiting factor is always therefore going to be the coverage of the mobile networks with decent speed services, but this shouldn’t slow down the adoption of codes like highly efficient AAC+ for delivery of Internet audio (e.g. at 48-64Kbps) so at least we start with a fighting chance of something that can be sustained over a poor edge connection, and have the added benefit that we reduce the bandwidth demands on home-broadband services for delivery of high quality audio.

Related to this, I love DAB (and have a radio in every room of the house) but the sound quality at present is just not high enough compared with a decent FM tuner – aac+ at 60Kbps might just be as good as a 128K MP2 stream such as Radios 1/2 (listen to Radio Caroline’s AAC+ stream to see) and 128K AAC is miles better!

I also therefore have a couple of Internet radios.

Sorry – I appear to have rambled on for ages…

Enjoy CES.

Briantist is almost wholly right. The media lobby out to sink DAB miss the point that it is the only viable *broadcast* technology out there whether in its present form or as DAB+. Much of the problem with getting stations on is not the technology but the daft environment Ofcom has created to licence and transmit multiplexes.

I have a factory-fitted DAB radio in my car (a Mini) and it opens up radio in the car. The sound quality is worse than FM (in the car you can hear the difference in dynamic range on Radio 2 quite clearly) but it is not worse than AM and all of a sudden Absolute Radio or (local) Clyde 2 are realistic options. As car listening tends to be dictated by when I’m in the car, I am more likely to hop station and the extra digital stations are also more appealing.

It would be good to be able to get a reliable wireless stream into the car but this would not be the infrastructure for the country to listen to Chris Moyles on the way to work, rather for the exception where a station is not available on broadcast locally.

The DAB/DAB+ debate will roll on but the need for reliable broadcast digital radio out and about of adequate quality is unquestionable … I don’t believe that is easily achieved using TV standards. DAB works technically, let’s lean on Ofcom to come up with a sustainable, affordable and spectrum-efficient strategy to make it happen.

I’m a firm believer that TCP/IP will become the primary carriage medium for all kinds of content which, until now, had been carried by other media.

DAB’s relatively limited choice, compared to online, will be usurped in this way, but in the wireless mobile internet space, it’s become clear that neither WiFi nor WiMax will cut it in the real world.

That means the telcos will become the dominant players. If you look at the emergence of mobile broadband dongles and USB sticks – plus the fact of quickening mobile data speeds and falling prices – it’s pretty easy to imagine a future where so much of our communication is SIM-enabled.

Robert Andrews: I’ve been a Unix system admin for over two decades. I love TCP/IP, I’ve been going on about it for longer than most people! I’ve even met Vint Cerf!

But! TCP/IP is not a great medium for one-to-many over-the-air broadcast networks. TCP/IP is for peer-to-peer.

It matters not when you have optical fibre networks that you stream, download or whatever some content because when they are fast and you have buffers there is no problem.

But when you have a radio station, or TV channel that is being provided live, simultaneously and synchronously to millions of people using the restricted resource of radio frequencies, it’s not the correct solution.

James has quite clearly explained the limitations of 3G, WiMax and the other mobile broadband technologies in terms of the time (for TDM) or frequency (FDM) networks. Unless someone changes the laws of physics, or we simply do not wish to listen to live radio anymore, there has to be a digital BROADCAST network.

Take for example, say, Captial with its 1,590,000 listeners. DAB can provide ALL of them, at once, using 1/10 of a DAB multiplex (itself 1.55MHz) – in effect 0.155MHz.

To do that via TCP/IP you would need 1,590,000 WiMax links with each WiMax slot taking 5MHz for starters. It’s a total non-starter. You would need thousands of transmitters and it would be a nightmare.

@Briantist,

I suggest you Google for evolved-MBMS, or eMBMS, which is going to be the broadcast standard for 3G LTE (i.e. it’s the 4G version of MBMS, which is the broadcast standard for 3G).

eMBMS includes support for SFNs (single-frequency networks – just like DAB uses), and from what I’ve read up to now, it should allow mobile network operators to dynamically switch a stream between being broadcast to being delivered via unicast, i.e. the most listened to stations would be broadcast, and those with only say one listener in a cell would be delivered via normal point-to-point transmissions. That’s basically the ideal situation.

Also, I don’t know why WiMAX keeps getting mentioned by radio people, because 3G LTE looks like it’s going to become the main 4G system that the mobile networks will use – WiMAX might be deployed by a new entrant though.

Actually, I agree that radio needs a dedicated broadcast platform, but only really because radio should remain free and mobile Internet costs money. But DAB/DAB+ is a very poor choice for that platform, and we’re simply paying for the mistakes made in the late 1990s – jumping years too early, adopting the wrong system in the first place, and so on.

But what I’m vehemently opposed to is that even though the broadcasters are going to get their (ultra expensive) dedicated broadcast platform, they also intend to completely sideline Internet radio. That’s just pure selfishness, and it’s totally against the interests of the general public.

Steve Green: I’m sorry but LTE is just too much “in the future”. Perhaps James will come back from CES with news on lots of hot, cheap consumer devices and zero-cost instant-install deployment systems for the supporting, but I don’t think there is a hope in hell of deploying the system in the medium term.

For a start the DDR frequencies that it will need are not free for another five years.

I can see that you have there a commitment to “Internet radio” and do not wish to see it “sidelined”, however I suspect that if you and only want to listen to a station from the other side of the planet then you will need to pay for the mobile internet access to do so.

If you want to share in “local” (ie, where you are, the region you are in or nation you are in) broadcast then you will be able to do this without direct payment using an efficient broadcast system.

Over-the-air terrestrial broadcast radio has been part of British culture since 1922 and, despite everything (mono TV, colour TV, the Internet) still very popular.

“for the supporting” network…

This is a splendid set of responses: really showing that those who read my blog are knowledgeable people.

I guess it’s worthwhile remembering that I’ve a radio in every room, and really don’t want to buy a mobile phone and a contract everywhere… and I certainly don’t want a different SIM card for the car…

One point that is being missed in a very interesting technical discussion is that it doesn’t matter what the platform is if the content still sucks.

“Canned” is the most commonly used phrase to describe US terrestrial, HD and Satellite radio content. It all sounds the same–non-interesting overly programmed garbage. Like a group of 10 people in a University commons room who decided to order a pizza–the only thing they could agree on was something that wasn’t hated by everyone (but not loved either).

Any system which has a finite number of stations available is going to find a ‘rush to the center’ by the existing players. In a world of ipods and podcasts and Internet radio we now have a more diffuse listening audience than ever, and any technology that limits what we can listen to is going to shave off listeners at the edges (edges that are growing and growing).

It for that reason I’ve yet to buy an HD radio or Satellite radio here in the US, and why I use my iPhone with broader reach: I just don’t need 3x the existing staleness when I can have 5000x the variety.

p.s. James Sometimes the captchas are pretty icky. Maybe my eyes are getting old.

@Briantist,

You seem to be suggesting that I was proposing that eMBMS should become the main digital radio platform – I didn’t say that. I merely mentioned eMBMS as an example of a broadcast standard that allows you to deliver Internet radio to very large audiences via mobile phone networks.

Also, LTE isn’t as far away as you think – and it doesn’t require Digital Dividend TV spectrum to be freed up anyway. Here’s 2 “commitments” from UK mobile networks for it:

http://www.3gamericas.org/pdfs/LTE_Commitments_List_Dec_2008.pdf

Orange UK has “committed” to LTE by Q4 2011 and Vodafone has committed to LTE by Q4 2012. It doesn’t specify what level of commitment, though.

I have to say that I don’t accept your point about LTE being “too much in the future” anyway. Whatever system the DRWG recommends should be used is going to be around for a very, very long time – look at how long AM and FM have been around. Where’s the motivation giong to come from to change from DAB/DAB+ in the future?? So whichever system is chosen has got to be the *right* system. And I’m sorry, but there’s no way that DAB/DAB+ is the right platform to use for the long-term.

The only reason DAB/DAB+ was chosen was because we’re already using it and the commercial broadcasters can’t afford the dual transmission costs. That’s no way to choose a digital radio system for the *long-term*. And the DRWG’s recommendations will end up being as bad as the original decision to adopt DAB in the first place. Mark my words.

And on the subject of me wanting to listen to mobile Internet radio. Of course I’m willing to pay for it – mobile broadband subscriptions will end up being as common as fixed-line broadband subscriptions anyway, and listening to Internet radio will just become a free application that you look upon as being included in the price, just like it is for fixed-line now.

As for the location of the Internet stream I want to listen to – it could be a BBC iPlayer programme, a BBC live station or a small-scale webcaster. It’s the Internet, so it doesn’t matter where it comes from.

@James,

You don’t need to use 3G or mobile broadband for all the radios in your house – just carry on using Wi-Fi.

BTW, here’s a couple of Blaupunkt Internet radio car stereos to look out for at CES:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/blaupunkt-and-m.html

They still require reception via a mobile phone then Bluetooth audio streaming to the car stereo, but it’s a start, and there’s apparently ones with 3G reception built-in in the pipeline.

@Steve Green: I have no idea how Orange and Vodafone can have “committed”. The UK Digital Dividend Review Auction has not started yet, they will be competing for the bandwidth with all other services. I have a list at http://www.ukfree.tv/fullstory.php?storyid=1107051387

These frequencies will be cleared by 2013 in a rolling process – until then there can be no UK national LTE. In addition if they get used by mobile operators from small-area masts that is a massive build exercise!

In the UK we have the BBC with 11 national radio networks that are well funded. Andrew Leyden makes a good point about “canned” stations, and the BBC services certainly are not like that at all.

I suspect that the answer is going to be a mixture of both DAB/DAB+/DRM for delivery of “big audience” stations and some form of Internet (via subscription delivery service) for “small audience” stations.

Also, I should have pointed out that, due to the “unique way it is funded” the BBC has a universal service obligation. Any service has to be there for everyone who pays for it.

@Briantist,

LTE is earmarked to use the 2.6 GHz band across Europe, so the TV spectrum doesn’t come into it. It was WiMAX that Ofcom mentioned as being a potential application that could use the TV spectrum, not LTE.

Regarding what the mixture of digital radio platforms will be, that’s all done and dusted bar a lot of shouting:

1. the vast majority of the population will listen at low audio quality via DAB because the BBC will only promote DAB on TV, so the vast majority of people will never actually even know what Internet radio offers

2. a small minority of the population, almost exclusively consisting of young and/or tech savvy people, will listen via the Internet

3. the tiny minority left over, who simply can’t be bothered to buy DAB or listen via the Internet, will listen via digital TV.

DRM/DRM+ effectively won’t be used at all – it’s not being included in the “common European digital radio standard”, nor in the WorldDMB Receiver Profiles.

Listening won’t be split between listening to big stations on DAB and small stations on the Internet. People will basically pick a platform and use that.

And as for the “unique way the BBC is funded”. Well, the BBC is also meant to be platform-neutral because the public pays for the BBC, but they’ve conveniently jetisoned platform-neutrality whenever it suits them, such as in the DRWG report, where they’ve chosen to only promote DAB.

Steve Green: The BBC promotes all radio platforms – that is DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C, Internet as iPlayer streaming, Internet as iPlayer downloads, Internet as podcasts, FM and AM. Try listing or watching or viewing the website. To say that they “BBC will only promote DAB” is just hogwash of the highest order.

Your stereotyping of listeners is rather excellent. I wonder where your facts are though. Can you back up your assumptions? I doubt it.

I think you will actually find that BBC Radio 4, the “intelligent speech” station is the most popular station when it comes to BBC online listening. That has an older profile, don’t you know?

As for “the tiny minority left over… will listen via digital TV” is clearly missing the facts. Radio 1Xtra, the “new black music” station gets the majority of its young-profile listnership from the digital TV platforms.

As for the BBC “conveniently jetisoned platform-neutrality whenever it suits them” is again wrong. BBC radio is available in many formats online including Windows Media, Real, Flash FLV, MP3 podcasts, plus as I pointed out above, to all of Europe as MP3 on MPEG2 on Astra 2A, as well as the legacy FM network (with RDS) (for 1, 2, 3 and 4), AM (for 4 and 5Live) as well as DAB.

Anyway, you have still to explain how these national networks can be supplied free to the public using anything other than broadcast networks.

I note http://www.ofcom.org.uk/radiocomms/spectrumawards/awardspending/award_2010/updatedec08/ with interest.

OK, so it’s technically possible for us to listen to radio on the move on a 3G mobile. The question is though will the networks really let us? As James points out O2 don’t want you to, others might be more keen but not if sucks up their capacity to offer call capacity to other customers. Maybe if they charged you £60 a month for the extra it might be worth their while but then who wants to pay that just to listen to the radio? Costs will come down but in the interim you’ve cut a big chunk of the audience out of the loop.

@Briantist,

“The BBC promotes all radio platforms”

Up to now, the BBC has shown 21 high-impact TV advertising campaigns for DAB, 1 low-impact TV ad campaign for radio via digital TV, and ZERO TV ad campaigns for Internet radio.

I’ve seen first hand that TV ad campaigns have an *enormous* effect on the sales of whatever’s being advertised. So they’ve clearly not been promoting Internet radio up to now (jingles on the radio or mentioning online on a website is completely insignificant compared to the massive power that TV adverts have on consumer behaviour), and according to the DRWG report it looks as if all TV ads in future are going to be for DAB as well. So, suffice it to say, I disagree with what you say.

“Your stereotyping of listeners is rather excellent. I wonder where your facts are though. Can you back up your assumptions? I doubt it.”

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/images/internet_listener_demographic.gif

That’s a figure copied from the RAJAR MIDAS3 report. 15-34 year olds are five times more likely to listen via the Internet than 55+ year olds. And I would also say that there will be a high correlation between age and tech savviness – this isn’t being ageist, it’s just the facts as I see them, and I don’t think I’m wrong.

“I think you will actually find that BBC Radio 4, the “intelligent speech” station is the most popular station when it comes to BBC online listening. That has an older profile, don’t you know?”

Radio 1 is the most-listened-to BBC station online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/siteusage/

“As for “the tiny minority left over… will listen via digital TV” is clearly missing the facts. Radio 1Xtra, the “new black music” station gets the majority of its young-profile listnership from the digital TV platforms.”

It’s my opinion that people who currently listen via digital TV will move to either DAB or the Internet. I can’t prove that, because it’s a prediction about the future.

“As for the BBC “conveniently jetisoned platform-neutrality whenever it suits them” is again wrong.”

My point was that there has been 21 BBC TV ad campaigns for DAB, and zero BBC TV ad campaigns for Internet radio. That is hardly being platform-neutral…

“Anyway, you have still to explain how these national networks can be supplied free to the public using anything other than broadcast networks.”

This is what I wrote in my first post on this thread:

“Actually, I agree that radio needs a dedicated broadcast platform, but only really because radio should remain free and mobile Internet costs money.”

I simply don’t think that the dedicated broadcast standard should be DAB/DAB+, or at least we should move to a far better broadcast standard by the time FM is switched off (there’s plenty of time to plan for that, because it’s going to take about 15 years to switch off FM). I’m a fan of DAB+ (my website is testament to that if you scroll around it), but I only saw it as a stop-gap system before the UK could use something better. There’s the DVB-H2 system that is going to come out in the next year or two which will be around 3 times as efficient as DAB+ – because the only thing better about DAB+ is that it replaces DAB’s MP2 audio codec with AAC+. DAB+ still uses DAB’s highly inefficient transmission scheme, that literally dates back to the 1980s, and newer transmission schemes are simply far more efficient.

It depends on what people want to receive in 12 – 15 years’ time when FM is switched off. Do they want broadcast digital radio to match the quality on FM? DAB+ won’t match the quality on FM, or at least it won’t on the commercial stations.

Won’t it be about time that broadcast digital radio provides the equivalent of high-definition by then?? If not, why not? It will certainly be possible if they used a more efficient standard, but it could never be provided on DAB+ due to capacity limitations – the capacity on DAB+ in terms of useful bits/second is actually lower than it is on DAB.

@Rich,

I haven’t heard that any networks other than O2 don’t allow you to stream audio/video via 3G/mobile broadband – and presumably O2 does allow iPhone users to stream, because the iPlayer is available on teh iPhone, plus there are Internet radio apps available for it as well.

One thign to bear in mind with mobile broadband is that it’s basically at the same stage as fixed-line broadband was in about 2001, when the speeds were 512 kbps. Mobile broadband currently uses the HSDPA standard. That’s going to be upgraded at some point to a higher speed version. Then there’s 3G LTE, which is classed as “4G”, which has max theoretical download speeds of over 300 Mbps – we won’t get 300 Mbps, but compare it to HSDPA’s max download speed of 14 Mbps, it’s a massive increase. Then after that there’s 5G, and the Japanese mobile operator NTT DoCoMo demo’d its 5G prototype system last year or the year before transmitting at 5 Gbps to a mobile receiver.

These headline speed increases are accompanied by equivalent increases in spectral efficiency, which means that the cost per Mbps for the mobile networks falls. So the value-for-money of mobile broadband is going to get far better than it is today, and in future we’ll be able to stream audio and video via mobile broadband in exactly the same way as we do via fixed-line today without worrying about how much data is being downloaded. At the end of the day, the mobile networks want to steal customers from fixed-line broadband, so they’ll be competing with the ISPs as well as competing with the other mobile networks.

Just do the maths.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-8472812-details/Battle+of+the+djs/article.do and http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/about_today/default.stm

“Wogan’s weekly ratings recently hit an all-time high of 7.9million, while Moyles’s inherited figures from Sara Cox have dipped below six million.” and ” just over six million listeners”

So, just for BBC Radio 1 and 2, there are 20 million listeners.

And we want good sound quality, say 128kbps.

20,000,000 x 128kbps = 2560000000 kbps or 2560000000 Mbps or 2441.40625Gbps or 2.38Tbps.

Or, using DAB it’s 4x128kbps which is 0.5 Mbps.

Now, call me old fashioned, but I would prefer to deliver this content using a broadcast platform, as it is easier to manage 0.5 Mbps than 2.38Tbps.

I drive for 1.5 hours a day. Almost everything I listen to now is recorded from Internet radio(using listen again) and played back using my iPod in the car. Adam and Joe being the highlight if the week. Don’t have any other choices in the depths of North Wales. I really enjoy good radio and I really enjoy the blog. Thanks.

Still waiting for iplayer on the apple tv by the way!

In light of all of this, what does everyone make of the Blaupunkt CES announcment?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-life/home-entertainment/articles/internet-car-radio-a-world-first/2009/01/07/1231004091554.html

(Entertainingly, the article above is from the Sydney Morning Herald – which ties in nicely with the photo above.)

Anyway, the car radio effectively connects to your phone via Bluetooth from whence it gets a 3G signal.

According to Blaupunkt “a 2GB monthly data plan would be required to power the internet radio for a month on the average drive to and from work.” Quite how long that “average drive” might be isn’t made clear.

There is a $400 fee for the radio plus $15 a month for – well – a Reciva type service I guess. The telecoms companies can probably rest easy worrying about the networks with those two costs alone.

A stand to visit at CES James?

Here’s a ‘real world’ experience I’m having right now.

I’m typing this from a coach on the M6 travelling from London to Manchester. (Due to the unique way the BBC funds me the nice quick train wasn’t an option this time).

I am sat on my Macbook connected to 3G with a Three USB Mobile dongle. I am listening to the BBC National Mux on a Pure 1500. The BBC Mux hasn’t skipped a beat since leaving London. I have had seamless reception (I haven’t bothered checking Digital One as there is no content I’m interested in on it, but we can safely say its coverage is higher than that of the BBC’s).

By comparison I have been kicked off 3G by Three every 30 minutes or so, having to reconnect. Browsing speed is acceptable, however as we pull up to the barriers of the M6 Toll I have yet been unable to connect to a live stream of a BBC Network, whether it be by Realplayer or the new Coyopa streams. Therefore my headphones have been plugged back into the DAB walkman.

Clearly Mobile Internet (of whatever form) has to go a long way further than this to provide a seamless (or even working) listening experience.

UPDATE: I am now streaming one of our 64k Windows Media streams quite acceptably, however each time I get booted off the connection, I’m back into rebuffering and missing content.

(These are my views and not those of my employer, etc)

@Ian Deeley,

Although you don’t say as much, in common with other BBC (digital) radio employees, it isn’t exactly difficult to figure that your allegiances lie with DAB, and that presumably you fully support the DRWG wanting to kill off Internet radio at birth so that the BBC can carry out its protectionist agenda. Am I right?

If so, could you explain to me how forcing everyone onto DAB by only advertising DAB on TV and by deliberately withholding information about Internet radio by not advertising it, is (a) platform-neutral, which because of the unique way the BBC is funded, that’s what the BBC is supposed to be, but in practice they’re only platform-neutral when it suits them, and (b) how this is in the best interests of the people who pay for the BBC (and pay for your wages I might add), the licence-fee payers??

And to be perfectly honest, I’d prefer to put up with a bit of buffering on the live BBC Internet streams than listen to the dire audio quality on DAB anyway. That’s assuming that the live BBC Internet streams do ever provide what I’d class as being good audio quality, because that seems to be up in the air at the moment.

@Steve Green,

Might I respectfully remind you that this discussion is about internet radio in cars. Happy to publish whatever you wish to say about that, but I will remove off-topic discussion. It’s my website, you’re my guest.

You’re more than welcome to re-publish relevant conspiracy theories as long as they’re on-topic. Trails on telly promoting DAB, or the BBC’s alleged platform-bias, really isn’t on-topic for a discussion about mobile internet radio.

@Adam Bowie,

To be honest, I don’t think $400 is all that bad for the world’s first Internet radio car stereo – very early adopter type devices are always very highly priced, such as the first DAB tuner costing £800 (which the BBC kindly broke in 2001 when they slashed their bit rates).

I thought I’d already said on here how much the equivalent costs are, but I can’t find it. Anyway, for a typical radio listener in the UK that listens for 20 hours per week, and 21% of all listening is done in the car, and for a 3 GB mobile broadband package costing £10/month, I work out that if you listen to 64 kbps streams you download 524 MB/month, which is the equivalent of £1.75/month, or double the MB and cost for 128 kbps streams.

At the end of the day, most people will still listen via FM a lot anyway, which would bring the amount downloaded down a lot. And it’s included in teh cost of mobile broadband anyway, so it’s not actually additional cost for people who already subscribe to mobile broadband – so long as they don’t use their entire download allowance every month.

Fair enough, James.

To be honest. I don’t see the problem here as so much being cost (although whether people will be willing to spend money to receive otherwise free radio is doubtful), as to whether the cellular system would be able to cope with many people taking this up.

And if I’m spending $400 on a car radio, I probably want it to sound as good as FM (or even DAB). I might be a little forgiving since I’m listening to radio from somewhere else in the world.

You must always be very careful with averages however. The mean number of hours listened to per week might be 20 hours, but the reality is that a lot of people are listening for perhaps half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon as they commute, while another group of people drive for a living and spend hours a day.

It’s not a symmetrical listening curve. The very fine Radio 4 series, More or Less, talked about this very subject this week with respect to average wages.

The other major reason why broadcast must continue to be an important part of the mix is because from the BBC’s point of view, their services must be free at the point of reception, and requiring internet subscriptions or data packages are problemmatical.

Anyway, I don’t want to stray into those areas, as they’re not really relevant to the practical aspects of streaming audio via IP on the move which is what this post is really all about. It’d be fascinating to hear from a telecoms company about how their network is being used.

I recently attended a launch of a new phone on the 3 network, and during the presentation, we were shown charts that show that the vast growth in data on that network. Sadly I didn’t get copies of them, but putting this in proportion to speech would be interesting.

Capacity is already a problem in some areas anyway: talk to someone who commutes on a train along a route where many fellow passengers are using USB dongles with their laptops. I’m told that contention is so bad as to make the experience awful – and that’s along a route where phone companies are surely putting capacity in as fast as they’re able.

James – potentially something else to throw in the CES suggestions as well:

Looking forward, I as a user want a seamless experience. I want to start consuming yesterdays Simon Mayo programme from 5 Live at home on my TV, pause it, pick it up from that point seamlessly on my iPhone and take it into my car then do the same at my desk in work.

To me, this would be truly mobile. If we solve the issue of seamless mobile data, will we be equipped to say, offer this sort of highly personalised iPlayer experience?

As someone who has tried to use HSDPA-3G and VSAT services to listen to Internet radio, I would concur with the earlier post by @iandeeley.

It’s an incredibly frustrating experience. Streams come through in low quality. They disconnect frequently. The connection to the 3G network itself is not particularly robust, either. Having to redial is a pain. Initialising a connection can take 10-20 seconds.

I’ve not used a portable DAB radio, on surface public transport, for a couple of year. It, too, was not without its limitations (with respect to quality of service). It did, crucially, provide a better listening experience than HSDPA-3G (or FM). The odd bit of gurgle was preferable to no programme, chopping and changing between stereo and mono, hiss, and sibilance.

I generally listen to non-live content on an iPod these days, relying on my telephone’s FM radio for any perishable live content (such as the PM programme). It’s easier and more reliable.

@Matt

Don’t forget that Adam and Joe is also podcasted, which may be more convenient that real time dubbing off a Listen Again/Live stream.

@Ian Deeley

Thanks for the tip and I appriciate there are podcasts available but I want to listen to the music as well…

A while back, a techy friend of mine, had what amounted to a PC in the boot of his car with a touch screen up front. every time he would pull up in his drive, the car would sync via wifi with his home PC. goes to show the extremes people are prepared to go to, to have the content they want, when and where they want it.

@Adam Bowie,

I forgot to say anything about the issue of people paying a monthly sub to listen to Internet radio – and I agree, I don’t think they would, especially not if it’s $15 per month. That’s a worse business model than WorldSpace.

I disagree with what you say about the sound quality, though, because there were over 4,000 Shoutcast stations using 128k MP3 or higher the last time I looked, so I’d bet most of them sound better than DAB, and a lot of them will sound better than the more mediocre FM stations as well. GCap/Global’s 128k WMA streams sound better than DAB as well. There are undeniably lots of low quality Internet stations, but the way I look at it is that there’s so many Internet stations that the poor quality ones are easy to avoid.

Good point about my use of averages – thinking about it, the most appropriate average would be the median, but unfortunately I don’t know what that is. To be fair, though, 30 mins to/from work commuting every day is 5 hours per week, and 21% of 20 hours is about 4 hours, so it’s not all that far off. I’ll try and remember to use 5 hours per week to calculate the costs in future on my website, anyway.

Re radio remaining free: I have said previously in this thread that I do think that radio needs its own dedicated broadcast platform, because I agree that it should remain free, and people shouldn’t be expected to pay an ISP to get it. My massive complaint, though, is simply that the DRWG wants to stop the public being told about Internet radio. I also think that if we’re going to use DAB/DAB+ as the main platform, we need to upgrade DAB+ now in time for FM being swithced off, or IMO DAB+ will be little better than DAB by the time FM is switched off.

Re data: I did some Googling about this a few months ago, and mobile data overtook voice last year apparently (can’t remember which network said this), and the head of Google Mobile (or whatever his job title was) reckoned that Google will eventually have more searches placed via mobile than from computers, although he didn’t say how long it would be before that would happen.

I’ve heard grumblings about mobile broadband speeds as well. It sounds like it’s taken off quicker than they were expecting.

@Briantist

RE: ‘when you have a radio station, or TV channel that is being provided live, simultaneously and synchronously to millions of people using the restricted resource of radio frequencies, it’s (TCP/IP) not the correct solution.’

I understand the Maths but could a form of Multicasting not help with the high demand streams?

Another non technical / Philosophical thought…

In my CAR I listen to FM/AM
At home, in my room I listen to my Flow via WiFi
Downstairs I’ll put on Last.fm
On the street I might listen to shoutcast on my iphone 3G
At my friends I’ll listen via Freeview or DSat
In Wales, on my bike I take my little DAB with me
and at work I’ll be making programmes and listening back to the mistakes on iplayer!

I guess what I’m saying Is that I quite like the variety of life, dealing with what I have at the place and welcoming the influance. I like feeling different in the car to at home. So I enjoy the freedom of not having everything everywhere. How would we ever discover a new beer if our favourite was at every pub and in every fridge!?

[...] limited research I’ve done would seem to suggest that this isn’t going to be a flawless experience; but [...]

I have the BMW ipod integration kit in my car so I thought I’d try listening to some streaming stations on the move with my new iPhone 3G. I do live out in the sticks a bit, but Orange coverage is very good generally and according to the map I would have 3G coverage pretty much from the off.

It wasn’t fun. First off, I discovered that the nearest cell to my house is GPRS only and is on a BIG hill, so I had to wait until I was out of range of that before I could even try to get anything streaming. After the phone locked onto an Edge-equipped cell I did get WPLJ up and running for a minute or so before I went up another hill and the phone locked back onto another GPRS cell. Silence. Arrrgh.

A bit further on, the Edge cell came back on and the sounds of New York flooded in once again. By this time I was nearing the twinkling metropolis of Gateshead and ’3G’ appeared on the iPhone. Wahey. I got to enjoy a whole 80 seconds of Lite FM in Miami’s Breakfast Show before the 3G disappeared and we were back to GPRS and silence was again golden.

And then I was at work.

The thing is that during the whole 21 mile journey my phone never dropped off the cell network (BMW give you a nice signal strength display when the phone is paired with the car) so voice calls would have been good to go from beginning to end. Clearly the handoff from one cell to another is the killer, with so many cells still being non-3G. In the space of a mile, you can go from 3G to Edge to GPRS and back to 3G.

I think listening to Elvis Duran on the way to work is still a way off, for me at least. A pity, because the wunder radio app on the iPhone serves you up virtually every radio station (that streams) on the planet and I have to admit that the 80 seconds of Lite FM in Miami that I did catch, the end of spot, a traffic bully and intro into a song, live halfway round the globe in my car in Gateshead was pretty darned cool!

@SteveGreen (“And to be perfectly honest, I’d prefer to put up with a bit of buffering on the live BBC Internet streams than listen to the dire audio quality on DAB anyway.”)

This statement is pretty much the same as saying that, rather than driving a reliable hatchback down an empty road to work every day, you would rather drive a race car along a toll road prone to traffic jams, continually pulling over to cool down or refuel.

Despite your incessant declamations, tenuous comparisons and tortured calculations, DAB works well enough and is enjoyed by millions. Radio is not — and never has been — hifi. To any real radio fan, your idea that interruptions to broadcasts are preferable to a barely-noticeable infidelity is, frankly, preposterous. And well worth repeating for amusement.

If you want to make a road bases analogy…

Internet radio is like driving in the Alps; an almost infinite amount of options possibilities and exiting roads to explore, all paved beautifully. A real pleasure for real drivers.

DAB is like a British Motorway; It gets you from your normal A to your regular B but you have no variety and very few options. They are full to capacity with no room for more lanes.

A real music fan wouldn listen via the internet. For the amazing choice and the superior audio quality. A couple of buffer stops really is worth it.
However, If you are more interested in the speech you might choose DAB… you don’t wonna miss the punch line!

Location is still the biggest factor. I can’t Imagine anyone sensible wanting an internet radio their car at this time. You’d end up either smashing up the radio or smashing up your car.