Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

ABC, SBS prep new digital radio service

IP the preferred distribution technology

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) corporation have started sourcing equipment and support for its new digital radio services for all state capital cities due to begin broadcasting in January 2009.

Both organizations have jointly called for proposals for providing equipment, distribution, and transmission services for the new digital radio broadcasts. The technical requirements are divided into data servers, encoding, multiplexing, and time zone delay systems; distribution; transmission; and monitoring and logging.

The new services follow a federal government policy announcement for the introduction of digital radio services. A request by the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) was made to national broadcasters to identify costs for a shared digital radio infrastructure.

The first stage involves the implementation of six metro city transmission services, which has already been approved by the government. Regional expansion for national coverage of the new service is planned but is yet to be endorsed by the government.

The ABC and SBS have agreed to share digital radio infrastructure which will minimize distribution costs, and common services and infrastructure are required where possible for the carriage of the combined ABC and SBS digital streams on land and via satellite.

The digital radio services will be encoded in digital audio broadcast (DAB) format like MPEG4 and HE-AAC v2, and, according to tender documents, the system must be designed so that no single equipment failure can put the whole service off-air.

"Internet protocol (IP) connection is preferred for data input and output on the data servers [and] the system shall support and facilitate acquisition of program associated data such as slide show, photos, and text and its subsequent play out along with the audio program," according to the joint proposal.

SBS has nine studios in Sydney and in Melbourne and uses Netia servers for broadcasting via Klotz digital mixers.

"It is essential that the encoding system integrates with the existing program playout system in SBS given that at least two radio channels will be simulcast in AM and FM using this equipment," according to the proposal.

The ABC expects to produce 20 digital programs in Sydney to broadcast nationally, and up to 10 programs will be generated in each state, encoded in MPEG-1 layer II format.

For distribution, both the SBS and ABC are looking for a fully managed solution with an availability of at least 99.985 percent, preferably via IP.

The IP networking equipment to distribute the digital radio content will need to be procured as part of the project.

Logging recorders are also required by both broadcasters in each capital city and there is a requirement to access the program loggers in any of the six capital cities remotely via IP to replay the audio and view the broadcast of any channel.

The broadcasters use Optus satellite services and the network requires geographically diverse and redundant paths to the satellite uplink.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is responsible for frequency allocations for broadcasting services and although planning for the transmission services is yet to be completed, both broadcasters expect the new transmission services to provide coverage equal to or greater than the existing FM radio services in each capital city.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, DAB, Department of Communications, Optus, SBS, VIA

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Oracle SOA Suite – Oracle BPEL Process Manager
    Changing markets, increasing competitive pressures and evolving customer needs are placing greater pressure on IT to deliver greater flexibility and speed. In response to these challenges, leading companies are adopting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a means of delivering on these requirements by overcoming the complexity of their application and IT environments. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Oracle Exadata - Extreme performance, lowest cost.
    As organizations contend with escalating demands for greater quantities of information, more sophisticated data analysis, and a burgeoning user population, Oracle Exadata makes database workloads faster, easier to manage, and less expensive. Oracle Exadata is the world’s first database machine to provide extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Read this whitepaper.
    Learn more »
  • The Big Six: The CIO Executive Council’s Frameworks for IT Value and Leadership
    This overview of six of the CIO Executive Council’s most important pieces of intellectual capital represents the thought leadership of literally hundreds of global CIOs spanning over half a decade. It is intended to convey the Council’s position on the current and future CIO role and the value that IT should be creating for the enterprise. We hope that it offers the IT community an intriguing and comprehensive roadmap for continued success.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments