France

[FR] Development of Digital Radio and Personal Mobile Television

IRIS 2007-4:1/19

Amélie Blocman

Légipresse

“The machinery is now in place for digital radio to reach French homes within a year”, declared the Minister for Industry on 13 March at a demonstration of new applications of digital radio, held at the invitation of the main French operators. On the previous day, the Minister for Culture and Communication, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, had referred four draft decrees concerning the development of digital radio and personal mobile television to the audiovisual regulatory authority ( Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) for its opinion. The drafts, drawn up jointly with the Minister with responsibility for Industry, were the result of public consultations carried out in November 2006. The first two draft “signal” decrees lay down the characteristics of the signals emitted for the supply of, firstly, digital radio services and, secondly, personal mobile television, in application of Article 12 of the Act of 30 September 1986. The two remaining draft decrees - “final decrees” - lay down the characteristics of equipment for receiving the signals. For digital radio, the draft adopts, in particular, the DRM standard (Digital Radio Mondiale) for the wavebands currently used for FM and the T-DMB broadcasting standard, with almost unanimous support from radio operators. This would allow the availability of very rich associated services (information scrolling on a screen, such as the title of the programme being broadcast, programme times, a map of France while the weather forecast was being broadcast, and so on). The Minister for Culture and Communication had also questioned the CSA on the advisability of adding another standard, more particularly DAB+, adopted as a global standard by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) last February. It should be noted that the T-DMB solution would require the replacement of receivers, and this would be expensive for households, as each household in France has, on average, between five and six analogue radios. Regarding personal mobile television, the draft adopts the DVB-H standard for terrestrial systems and DVB-SH for mixed terrestrial/satellite systems. The CSA should deliver its opinion within a month. The decrees could then be published at the end of April, after the European Commission has been notified.