DRM+ trial in Norway

Following the recent successful trials in New Delhi, Edinburgh, the Vatican City State and Brazil, Digital Radio Mondiale has announced that Norway’s commercial media house 21st Venture AS is embarking on a full DRM+ trial in Trondheim during May and June 2013.

The company runs Radio Metro and several other local radio stations in Norway and has secured government funding for the project.

The trial will coincide with the annual conference of the Norwegian Local Radio Association, taking place from 24th-26 May. Members of the DRM Consortium from Fraunhofer IIS, Digidia, RFmondial and Nautel have offered their knowledge, expertise and support to the Norwegian trial.

DRM Consortium Chair, Ruxandra Obreja, said: “In Trondheim we hope to demonstrate that there is a cheap and effective solution for digitising small radio stations (commercial and community) which can run on their own or compliment other standards”.

Eivind Engberg, Technical Manager of Radio Metro is enthusiastic about the project.  “One of the key benefits of DRM+ is that you are using existing infrastructure and thus get digital radio almost free of charge. DRM+ also uses so little capacity that you can feed the transmission site via ICE (Net1), 3G or ADSL”.