18 March 2025

Italy Will Retain FM Radio For At Least Another 10 Years

Broadcast stakeholders want to maintain coextstence between FM and DAB.

The regulator AGCOM of February 18, 2025 presented the results of a survey on the development of DAB+ in Italy launched on September 11, 2024. Stakeholders unanimously agree on the need to maintain the coexistence between FM, DAB+ and other radio service distribution platforms, such as IP-based, for at least the next decade. The transition from FM to DAB+ should be gradual and subject to the full development of DAB+, including the availability of adequate spectrum resources to ensure programming, coverage and capillarity equivalent to those currently offered by FM, in order to reach all users.

In this context, stakeholders underline the importance of introducing incentives for simultaneous broadcasting on FM and DAB+ during a transitional period, in order to facilitate user migration and ensure a smooth transition.


Online magazine Newslinet comments that stakeholders could also lose their feathers, overwhelmed by the costs of simulcasting FM, DAB and on-line.

It is no news that the Italian radio sector, in light of technological transformations, changes in user habits and ongoing regulatory developments, will find itself at a crucial crossroads after the stabilization of the attributions of usage rights to local DAB consortia (which will presumably occur before the end of 2025, if, as it seems, the beauty contests are not held).

The transition process from analogue FM to digital, driven by the affirmation of digital technology over the air and the development of disintermediated distribution of over-the-top platforms – with the consequences determined by the multiplication of the offer and the competition of streaming on demand - represents an epochal challenge, not only in technological terms, but also in relation to the sustainability of the business models of the radio supply chain, writes Newslinet.


Also developing on the Italian radio broadcast scene are the terrestrial digital platforms DRM and 5G Broadcast.


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