Norwegians shop for the FM radio’s death – Helsingborgs Dagblad

Economy September 4, 2016 10:33

Never again will anyone norwegian having to swear over noisy radio stations. About half a year Norway becomes the world’s first country to permanently pull the plug on the FM radio. And sales of DAB sets going well.

In January begins Norway shut down its FM transmitter. For those who hesitate are transitional products in the picture, which allows listening to DAB stations even on old devices. Photo: Tore Meek

During the first half of this year invested every fifth Norwegian radio listeners in a new digital device, according to industry organization Elektronikkbransjens statistics released the other day.

– There has been steady sales of DAB radios, very high numbers of 3-4 years. Nowadays it is only DAB sets sold in the Norwegian market, says Marte Ottemo at Elektronikkbransjen news agency NTB.

Norway is, together with others including the UK, at the forefront of what has been thought to be a global transition from analogue to digital radio network.

in Sweden and many other countries, the emergence of Internet-based audio channels created a doubt about it whatsoever need to build separate radio network in the classic version. Swedish DAB broadcasts began on a trial basis over 20 years ago, but since then has basically nothing happened.

For more than a year ago, in June 2015, declared the Minister of Culture Alice Bah Kuhnke in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that the Swedish government is awaiting how Norway handles the switch-off of FM transmitters in 2017.