4. Digital radio and IP

Broadcast radio systems, both analog and digital, using terrestrial, cable or satellite distribution networks, provide almost complete national coverage. The quality of the audio signal received by households is widely perceived as satisfactory, and radio receivers are widely available and relatively inexpensive.

On the other hand, the Internet has seen rapid and successful development of services such as electronic mail and communication, e-commerce and e-banking. And although it was not originally conceived as an audio transport mechanism, the Internet has two characteristics that conventional broadcasting lacks, because it is a network:

• global, from factoglobal – a listener can listen to tens of thousands of radio stations from every region of the planet, in almost every language;

• ...