Unresolved HD Radio technical and regulatory issues—including ...
Unresolved HD Radio technical and regulatory issues -- including authorization of multicasting and datacasting -- may see action at the July 13 FCC open meeting. Commissioners also might weigh authorizing AM nighttime transmissions. HD Radio developer iBiquity Digital has…
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visited often with FCC staff -- most recently on July 5 -- to tout progress bringing “HD2” multicasts online. Experimental authority endorsed by the FCC in March 2005 has let stations multicast since then. To date, the FCC has not acted on the NRSC-5 standard on which it sought comments in 2005. NRSC-5 has stirred controversy, in part because it doesn’t include an HDC codec iBiquity has kept under very tight wraps. In its latest update for FCC staff, iBiquity tallied 1,407 stations in 206 markets licensed for HD Radio, with 814 stations in 148 markets on the air and 249 stations in 49 markets multicasting, according to an ex parte filing at the FCC on the July 5 meeting. In a May 18 update, iBiquity said it had licensed 1,266 stations in 200 markets, of which 794 in 147 markets were on the air and 226 in 52 markets were multicasting. With audio flag bills under consideration in Congress, the FCC is seen as unlikely to act on HD Radio content protections that were the subject of a Commission inquiry issued with the last rulemaking.