The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) yesterday released a consultation paper on ‘Formulating a Digital Radio Broadcast Policy for Private Radio Broadcasters’.

At present, analogue terrestrial radio broadcast in India is carried out in medium wave (MW) (526-1606 KHz), short wave (SW) (6-22 MHz), and VHF-Il (88-108 MHz) spectrum bands. VHF-Il band is popularly known as FM band due to deployment of frequency modulation (FM) technology in this band.

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

However, considering the technological shift, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) in April sought TRAI’s inputs in formulating a digital radio broadcast policy for private radio broadcasters; especially as  some existing provisions under FM Phase-Ill policy may require a relook, the broadcast regulator said yesterday in a statement.

Digital radio broadcasting will provide a number of advantages over analogue radio broadcasting — a big advantage being the capability of broadcasting three to four channels on a single frequency carrier, while ensuring audio quality for all the channels.

All India Radio initiated digitization of its analogue MW and SW radio broadcast network and replaced its existing 38 analogue transmitters with digital transmitters. It has conducted trials for digital radio technologies in FM band also. However, any initiative in digitization of FM bands by private FM radio broadcasters is still awaited.

But, it’d be interesting to note that TRAI had submitted recommendations on ‘Issues related to Digital Radio Broadcasting in India’ in February 2018.

In its recommendations, the regulator recognized that there was a need 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.

The Authority had also emphasized that the government should come out with a detailed policy framework for Digital Radio Broadcasting in India, which should provide a detailed roadmap for rollout of digital radio broadcasting services in a time bound manner.

The fresh consultation process, dwelling on various issues relating to formulation of digital radio broadcast policy for private radio broadcasters, is open till October 28.