TRAI begins consultations on policy for private digital radio broadcasters

New Delhi: The government on Monday released a consultation paper to help formulate a policy for the private digital radio broadcasters in the country.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the move is to bring all the stakeholders - radio broadcasters, transmission equipment manufacturers, and digital radio receiver manufacturers - on one platform and to encourage them to work collectively for developing the ecosystem for digital radio broadcasting.

TRAI is seeking stakeholders’ comments on various issues relating to formulation of digital radio broadcast policy for private radio broadcasters.

The written comments on the consultation paper are invited from the stakeholders by October 28 and counter comments, if any, may be submitted by November 11.

According to the authority, analogue terrestrial radio broadcast in India is carried out in medium wave (MW), short wave (SW) and VHF-II (FM) spectrum bands.

The public service broadcaster All India Radio (AIR) provides radio broadcasting services in MW, SW and FM bands. Private sector radio broadcasters are licensed to transmit programmes in FM frequency band (88-108 MHz) only.

According to the government, digital radio broadcasting will provide a number of advantages over analogue radio broadcasting.

“The major advantage of digital radio broadcasting is capability of broadcasting three to four channels on a single frequency carrier, while ensuring excellent quality of audio for all the channels, whereas in the analogue mode only one channel broadcasting is possible on a frequency carrier,” informed the Ministry of Communications.

Digital radio broadcasting can provide exciting new opportunities to radio broadcasters as well as a host of value-added-services to the listeners.

AIR has already initiated digitisation of its analogue MW and SW radio broadcast network and replaced its existing 38 analogue transmitters with digital transmitters.

According to the ministry, AIR has conducted trials for digital radio technologies in FM band tool. However, any initiative in digitisation of FM band by private FM radio broadcasters is still awaited.