The British Broadcasting Corp. Wednesday launched digital audio broadcasting, a step into what it called a new era for radio.
But it said it would be years before most of its millions of listeners could enjoy the new technology."It's the dawn of the third age of radio, the technological progression from AM - now 100 years old - and FM - now 50 years old - into the digital multimedia world of the 21st century," said Liz Forgan, BBC Network Radio Managing Director.
Forgan said the BBC was offering the world's first operational digital audio broadcasting service after Wednesday's launch of transmissions of its five national stations via the new system.
The technology combines high quality sound with a strong and reliable signal. It also opens up extra capacity on which new services can be offered and text and data supplied.
But none of this will have been obvious to listeners blearily tuning their transistors Wednesday morning.
The initial BBC service is limited to the Greater London area and covers just 20 percent of Britain's population.
The BBC said this figure will increase to 60 percent by 1998 as a further 22 transmitters are installed across the country in addition to the exisiting five in the southeast.
Furthermore, receivers are only at the prototype stage and have to be specially ordered from manufacturers.
"As with the birth of television in the 1930s, there are probably only a handful of listeners at the moment," said David Witherow, the BBC's digital audio broadcast director. "This will probably grow to a couple of hundred in the next few months."
Witherow admitted the prototype receivers were for the moment bulky and expensive. Those for cars have to be mounted in the trunk and would cost around 2,000 pounds ($3,150).
But the BBC insists that it will stimulate demand for receivers by pioneering digital audio broadcasting.
"Through this measured risk-taking the BBC will help to prime the new market," said Forgan. "We are at an introductory stage, and consumer sets will not be in the shops for two years."
The technology has been developed by a consortium of European broadcasters and consumer electronic firms grouped in the Eureka 147 project.
It works by transforming continuous analog sound waves into a series of noughts and ones.
The method eliminates the fading and interference which currently bugs listeners. It also means that one FM frequency will cover the whole country - sparing drivers the chore of having to retune the car radio as they move from area to area.