In a white paper published by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture at the end of last week, the government department in Oslo announced they are ready to offer economic support to stations investing in other technologies than DAB before 2017 when the national FM stations start shutting down their FRM transmitters and start migrating to digital radio. The proposal is out there for comment and will be put the vote to the Norwegian parliament most likely in the first quarter of 2016.
The white paper states that : "Some bodies commenting on our proposal have pointed out that Any financial aid should be technology neutral and not just go to the development of DAB networks. The Ministry agrees with this. It should therefore be open to offering support to local radio wishing to establish themselves as Internet radio or wishing to benefit from other digital technologies."
Norway is the first West European country to take a wide digital view supporting not only DAB+ but also other technologies like DRM. Many localities and areas of Norway have 1-2 local stations only and they could also benefit from adoption of DRM especially after FM vacates some of the frequencies in band II. The challenge is to support those wishing to adopt other technologies like DRM with multi-standard receivers, a task Norwegian specialists are already addressing."
Source : http://www.drm.org/?p=4161
