International DRM Digital Radio Workshop in India

New Delhi, India - With the growing interest shown by India in the adoption of DRM - the universal, openly standardised, digital radio system - the DRM consortium is organising presentations and a dedicated DRM session during the BES Expo International Conference to be held in Delhi from 23-25 Feb 2009. Mrs.Ruxandra Obreja, Chairperson DRM Consortium, will deliver the keynote speech on the first day of the conference. On the opening day, 23rd February, DRM will conduct a specialised workshop covering many aspects of the technology and its usage. About 40 engineers of All India Radio (AIR) stations from all over India have expressed interest in the DRM workshop. These are stations which the national broadcaster plans to convert to digital using DRM technology. On the 24th there will be a two hour long DRM session dealing with the subject of multiple delivery platforms chaired by Mr Sharad Sadhu, Technical Director, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. During BES, there will be chance to listen to the special transmission of the recently launched DW & BBC channel for Europe. Deutsche Welle(DW) will offer this additional DRM transmission from Trincomalee (Sri Lanka) to India (New Delhi) from 22 to 26 February at 0500-0759 UTC on 12055 kHz. DW has also regular DRM transmission to India from 0800 UTC to 0859 UTC on 12005 kHz. Indian state broadcaster AIR is already broadcasting in DRM from one of its high-power shortwave transmitter located at Khampur near Delhi. The DRM service was formally launched on 16th January, 2009, and almost five hours of transmissions are aimed at listeners in the UK and Europe.

Ruxandra Obreja, Chair of the DRM Consortium and Controller Business Development, BBC World Service, said: "Our presence at BES will give the All India Radio engineers the chance to explore the benefits and challenges of a DRM roll-out in India. As India is one of the most populated countries in the world with a dynamic media landscape, the DRM Consortium is very happy that a well-known broadcaster like All India Radio has decided to expand their DRM transmissions and take an interest in this most suitable digital option for India."

H.R.Singh, Engineer-in-Chief, All India Radio, the overall engineering head of the All India network said, "Our regular DRM transmission from a 250 kilowatt shortwave is the first step of our digital radio switchover strategy. The DRM transmission is being beamed towards Europe from 1745 to 2230 UTC on 9950 KHz and a NVIS service in DRM mode is also under operation from 1430 to 1730 IST on 6100 KHz, to cover an area of approximately 800 kilometre radius around Delhi. We are also in the process of converting four 250 kW shortwave transmitters to DRM mode by March 2009. There are plans to introduce DRM transmissions in high power medium wave and short wave transmitters on a large scale in the near future."

About AIR
AIR is the national public service broadcaster of India. AIR today has a network of 232 broadcasting centers with 149 medium frequency (MW), 54 high frequency (SW) and 171 FM transmitters. The coverage is 91.79% of the area, serving 99.14% of the people in the largest democracy of the world. AIR covers 24 Languages and 146 dialects in home services.
In External services, it covers 27 languages; 17 national and 10 foreign languages.

About DRM
Digital Radio MondialeTM (DRM) is the digital broadcasting system for the broadcasting bands below 30MHz (long, medium and short wave). DRM has near-FM sound quality plus the ease-of-use that comes from digital transmissions, combined with long range and low power consumption . Further information on DRMTM is available from www.drm.org .

About BES
BES EXPO 2009: Conference & Exhibition on Terrestrial & Satellite Broadcasting is the fifteenth in the series of events to be organised by Broadcast Engineering Society. Nearly 300 companies from 25 countries displayed their products in BES EXPO 2008 directly or through their dealers in India. Exhibiting companies included those from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, U.K. and U.S.A. BES EXPO 2009 is scheduled to be held from 23rd February 2009 to 25th February 2009 at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India. The theme of the Conference is "Broadcast Technology: Integrating the World".

(DRM Press release)