A new perspective on digital radio

This week I contacted Industry Canada with regards to the plan for digital radio and mentioned this hobby and stated my concerns. My answer was a referral to the FCC info site all about digital radio for consumers.

Realized that thinking  this hobby would be dead was not the case at all.

Here's the deal.....it is not going to be like the way TV went at all. it will work by being a hybrid system. The AM and FM bands remain the same. The digital signal will use the sidebands of the existing frequencies not affecting the analog transmission. On FM the audio deviates + or - 75khz from center frequency and there is a 25khz guard band on each side of that. the stations will, when and if they go digital, use those sidebands and not affect the normal analog signal. AM will be similar. Any normal radio as we know now will work normally and just not get the digital signal. To get the digital broadcast you just detune the radio a bit to get the sideband on a reciever capable of digital reception. All stations will(that want to) transmit simultaneously both signals. Receivers would also be able to automatically select digital or analog if one or the other is not received well. Or you can manually select digital or analog. The system is IBOC, a patented system of simulaneous broadcasting in both types of reception. The frequency bands 88-108 and 520-1710 stay unchanged.

Contacted Susan Crawford at the FCC in charge of digital radio for consumers and mentioned my concerns over this and my answer was this won't affect "part 15" as the existing system will not be scrapped and all digital radios will receive the analog signal. There is 800 million radios in the US today and all the new receivers will number the same receiving both signals. and most radios sold now are still conventional not digital. As for this becoming manditory and radios made to only get digital, there are NO plans at this time or in the forseeable future for this to go the way of TV. Even TV sets now still can receive an analog signal. Susan said that any plans to do away completely with analog is "quite far down the road and not in any plan now"

So our hobby will be around for a long time and so will the radios as we know them.

Mark