The BBC has published an article about the long, slow birth of DAB radio which can be summarized as follows:

• Currently, the British government is pushing hard for listeners to switch to Digital radio and specifically the DAB standard. While DAB is heralded as the ‘technology of the future’, few know that it is really ‘the technology of the past’ since it is about 30 years old. While the first development began in 1981, the first receivers were available only in 1999 and it is only ten years after that (2010) that there is some real commercial interest in DAB.

• So what went wrong? According to independent radio analyst Grant Goddard, as per the BBC article, “the fact it was developed by a multitude of European governments and state broadcasters, such as the BBC, via Eureka 147 rather than by the private sector was a crucial factor in delaying its launch”. And adds that “if Nokia develop something, they’ll be bringing out the handsets before you know it“.

• The issue was further complicated by a lack of interoperability and consistency in terms of available spectrum because each country had to then implement legislation for the spectrum to be used by DAB since there was no pan-European system.

• And to cap it all off, due to the long delay, DAB’s time may have passed before it even arrived, with other forms of digital technology – such as broadband – allowing listeners to access radio on their laptops and phones.

So, what can we learn from this?

• DAB may have succeeded if it had had some industry backing in the first place, i.e. industry would have tried to create devices not just standards.

• There was a role for government, but it lay in pan European spectrum harmonization. Industry backed standards could have developed on top of that framework thereby avoiding the situation of having a standard in isolation (without spectrum).

But most importantly, time and standards wait for no one.

Endless delay in co-ordination means that when the standard ultimately arose (after 30 years), better technologies have come along and superceded it.

We are assured that DAB is a part of the past. But will it be a part of the future? Time will tell.