Five out of the eight broadcast licences issued in Switzerland for DAB+ radio expired this week without their owners having launched the promised digital stations.
The country now has only three DAB+ stations, with one launching on Sunday's deadline.
Blogger Grant Goddard wrote on his [link=http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/switzerland-five-of-eight-dab-radio.html]website[/link] yesterday:
[blockquote]Two stations, Radio.ch and SoundCity, had already handed back their unused licences to Swiss media regulator Bakom. Now, Energy Zurich’s licence to provide a service named Radio For Youngsters, aimed at 10 to 14 year olds, has also expired.
Egon Blatter, owner of Radio 105, said he had hoped that Energy Zurich’s proposed switch from FM to DAB in 2010 would have changed the whole audience for digital radio. He has “reluctantly” let the DAB+ licence expire of his proposed station DJ Radio Deluxe, as has Oliver Fluckiger’s RadioJay.[/blockquote]
Earlier this month a report on digital radio in France was released, which suggested that the planned launch of France’s first digital radio stations in mid-2010 was “implausible” and it proposed that an economic model for digital radio needed to be identified before an estimated 600m to 1bn Euros is spent over the next ten years on the rollout of digital radio in France.
Meanwhile, in Austria, the media regulator put DAB radio on hold because "in neighbouring Germany, there is no unanimous agreement on adopting DAB or DAB+ and therefore no successful large-scale launch."