Car industry key to driving take-up of digital radio services

Digital technologies are great - crisp, clear and with the scope to deliver far more content over the spectrum on which they run than traditional analogue services. The main battle, though, is getting people to switch over.

This is not an issue in the TV market, as the spectrum for analogue signals is being switched off to make way for 4G phone coverage in the future. It will be replaced by digital signals so that services likes Freeview can offer more content and channels to consumers.

But it's not so simple in the radio market. Standard radios that pick up AM/FM stations are still the dominant devices as consumers fail to understand the benefits of digital radios, mostly because they never actually use the technology.

However, the key driver to the take up of the technology looks like it will come from the car industry as manufacturers start to fit digital radios as standard.

Internet minister Ed Vaizey said during a speech at the Intellect Conference in London that in-car deployments are on the up, and that he welcomed commitments from major car manufacturers to make the technology standard for all new vehicles.

"Forty per cent of cars have DAB [Digital Audio Broadcasting] radios as standard now, up from just four per cent a year ago. Ford has promised that all cars will have DAB installations by 2012, and BMW and Vauxhall have made similar announcements," he said on Tuesday.

It's not just digital radios that are entering the cars of the future. Satnav devices are often built in these days, and other, more exotic, forms of technology are on the horizon.

Ford announced at the CEBIT show in Hanover in March that it will launch a number of vehicles in Europe with built-in voice-activated technology designed to allow drivers to integrate devices such as smartphones.

The Ford Sync technology will be built into 10 vehicles due to be launched in Europe next year, including the latest Ford Focus. 

With all these innovations to come, and 4G wireless signals to offer speeds of 30Mbit/s or above while on the move on smartphones and tablets, our cars are set to become a lot more fun, although the driver needs to stay focused on the road ahead, of course.

05 Jul 2011