A commercial radio station in Worcestershire, UK closed down suddenly yesterday due to legal problems with its licence. The Managing Director of Sunshine Radio on 1530 AM, Ginny Murfin, said she was informed by the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom that the licence still belonged to Classic Hits Radio Ltd – a company which was dissolved yesterday.
Mrs Murfin said that due to the company going out of business and legal issues surrounding another frequency on the licence it was not possible to sort the problem out or change the name on the licence agreement. Mrs Murfin said that the regulator, Ofcom, is trying to phase out AM frequencies and is no longer making 1530 available for broadcasting. She said: “It is a very sad day because there has been a radio station operating on that frequency for 20 years.”
(Source: Worcester News)
on Apr 8th, 2010 at 20:38
Why ? Its not like theres much else they can do with these frequencies. They cant exactly use them for mobile phones or broadband ?
on Apr 9th, 2010 at 08:46
Oh yes they can! Power Line Networking devices, can and already do use “AM” frequencies (Shortwave in this case) for their data links. The resulting leakage from unbalanced power lines can totally obliterate SW reception for 500m or more!
See http://plt.g7cnf.me.uk/ and http://www.ukqrm.org/ for more info.
ADSL links, also use frequencies similar to/same as AM “Medium Wave” broadcasts. It’s just that in this case, the phone lines are much better balanced the signal levels are lower, and the resulting leakage is very very much less. However, you can sometimes hear it driving about towns and villages as you pass under some (not all) phone wires.
(The funny thing is, there is some evidence, that using Power Line Networking adapters, can reduce your ADSL speed, due to them interfering with the ADSL signals!)
There are also some new Power Line Networking adapters about, that do the same trick as above (blot out just about all Short Wave) and also take out VHF frequencies too, up to 300MHz or more! So, there goes FM broadcast, the Emergency services, Air traffic control, DAB etc etc.
As to AM (Medium Wave) broadcasting. Here in the UK, the West Coast main rail line has been upgraded, which is a good thing I suspect. But in the process, “something” has been introduced that seems to cause total MW wipe out, for up to 100m either side of the railway line. Maybe some new power control/management system, no one is admitting anything at the moment. As the railway network is not considered a “point source” of interference, it seems to fall through a loophole in the UK/EU EMC rules. To the detriment of anyone living near it, who wants to listen to any AM (MW) broadcast stations.
Regards.
D