Bangladesh ready to launch HD Radio Broadcasting

HD Radio broadcasts will cover shortly the capital city of Dhaka and surrounding regions with high-quality audio for news and entertainment. Bangladesh’s government broadcaster, Betar Engineering, will be the first to launch HD Radio across the South Asia region, covering 18 million listeners with a turnkey system from GatesAir.

GatesAir is a provider of wireless, over-the-air content delivery solutions for radio and TV broadcasters. Betar chose HD Radio due to its exceptional audio quality and multichannel opportunities. 

“Dhaka is considered the tenth largest city in the world, with a population of more than 18 million in the greater region,” said Md. Abul Bashar Patwary, project director, Betar Engineering.  “We therefore required a highly reliable, easily serviceable over-the-air delivery platform to ensure consistently strong coverage across the entire region. GatesAir’s ability to provide a reliable, US-made platform in a timely manner is helping us get on the air faster—and on the leading edge of digital radio.”

GatesAir worked closely with Betar across site planning and system design, including all transmission, antenna, monitoring and peripheral equipment.

In addition to program audio, this architecture allows Betar to deliver program-associated data services (logos, station ID information, artist/song title details) over a single stream to the transmitter—with plenty of bandwidth to add more program channels in the future.