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Comment by timonoko | Hacker News Reader

FM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing. The cell-phone digital network is much more advanced, the antennas are on mountain tops and there is always coverage within few hundred meters.

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Problem is DAB coverage sucks compared to FM, it's not an improvement. In the Western Norway with hundreds of tunnels only the bigger ones are equipped with radio relays. Plenty of dead spots outside major highways too.

I had to drive Bergen-Voss 4x last June around the time a landslide ruined E16, taking a different detour each time. Very spotty in the tunnels along Hardanger, which is a major route. Even worse out there along fv344 which goes mostly on the surface, but through numerous tiny valleys.

There was a talk about postponing the FM sunset, which would be wise given that majority of vehicles don't have DAB support, and some of the most popular models are still sold without DAB tuners. Either way, DAB is an unfortunate transitional technology. Sounded nice in 2000, obsolete now. I concur that 4G network streaming would make much more sense in this era.

Radio is great at broadcast, sucks at point to point with thousands of people. Multicast doesn't work on the internet. Broadcasting digital signals is a better way to use bandwidth.

Interesting idea! There is cell broadcast for emergency text information, why wouldn't it be possible to broadcast a bunch of audio streams over 4G along with the telephone and internet service? Better than everyone listening to their own stream over 4G.

(Edit: the technology and protocols for this exist and are discussed elsewhere in this thread.)

Add to that tunnels. In western Norway one drives up to 10% of time in tunnels and only very few channels and only in longer tunnels have coverage. Mobile networks work reliably most of the time.

>FM radio in Norway sucked so much because of mountains. Every fjord had its own tiny repeater, but only if there was at least one inhabitant, otherwise you heard nothing.

Doesn't that imply that there wasn't anyone to hear anything in the first place?

No. There are lots of bits of Norway with no or few inhabitants but there is a road with traffic.

What is a fjord?

https://www.google.no/search?q=fjord&tbm=isch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord

It's a steep-sided inlet. They're award winning you know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fjord

So "steep-sided inlet" as in "mountian going into a lake".

more likely going straight into the sea

Lovely crinkly edges.

I cannot describe how disappointed I was that the awards were not mentioned in the wikipedia article :(

A coastal mountain type originally designed by Slartibartfast. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast

Something that Parrots pine for..

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pining%20for%...

A classical fjord is a U shaped valley carved out by a glacier. Quite different from a valley carved by a river.

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