Sounds like they're trying to protect the livelihoods of the buggy-whip makers... *LOL*

DAB signal is pretty shit in most places, get rid of that then no one will be able to listen to the radio anymore. Not everyone is into computers, lots of old folks still love their "wireless" and make use of FM where DAB isn't available. Its shocking how poor DAB is for signal, granted it sounds nicer than FM but not when your in a town that is big, supposed to have good signal yet there are still spots, largely populated spots that I drive through when the signal just goes dead.

"...who simply don't understand what's good for them and keep refusing to spend money on DAB."

" ...do not fully understand the choice of free-to-access services" while asserting that stubborn analogue oldies are simply happy with what they've got and don't see the need to buy a DAB set."

Some of us "oldies" have no bloody choice but to stick with FM.

Where I live we have no DAB signal, so why would I fork out for something that is of absolutely no use to me?

Give me a viable alternative and I *might* consider changing but from anecdotal evidence DAB is no real advance on what I already have.

In actual fact I do a lot of my listening via my PC, mostly TMS, but it is nice to just switch on the radio and not have to log in and scratch around looking for the BBC Sounds website.

There's also the aspect of not wanting to throw away perfectly usable kit. I have a wake-up lamp with radio in my bedroom. The light steadily brightens in a morning, then the radio slowly fades up at alarm time to wake me. It works, it does the trick, and the FM receiver in it can receive the station I want to wake up to and plays it with perfectly acceptable quality.

Why should I want to throw it away if it works OK?

Plenty of other people I know use radios that are far older. They still work, they play what the listener wants to hear, and the audio quality is fine for that person's needs. I just don't see the point or the obsession with binning working kit just to jump on the rather questionable DAB bandwaggon.

I fitted a decent DAB stereo unit into my car some years back and it works pretty well, yes there are spots where the service is poor but I don't think I'd get much improvement from using 4G via a smartphone, given how crap my phone signal is up in the hills.

We have a decent one in the car but my point is, the spot where DAB dies, FM still works fine.

And that is the basis of the whole issue. DAB was marketed as the superior replacement of FM. It may be of superior sound quality, but FM works everywhere.

It may be of superior sound quality

Except that it isn't. The technology could offer higher quality (although the protocol used was a bit long in the tooth when it was chosen) but instead broadcasters prefer to compress the whatsit out of the audio stream in order cram in as many different stations as possible.

Rumour has it that the industry might be more interested in revenue than quality. Amazing.

Unusually for me, I was an early adopter of DAB radio. But I spend most of my radio listening still on FM, as a clean FM signal seems to me to give the best sound quality. Slightly better than DAB for BBC Radio 3 and classical music. I do listen to some of the UK's digital only stations too. Maybe it is the older DAC that I have (but it was listed in What Hi-Fi as 'the best radio in the world' at the time, and cost a fortune - does AM, FM, LW and DAB).

I suspect that younger people tend to listen on their mobile devices or computers these days, so have little need for a radio, whereas us oldies stick to what we tend to know and feel comfortable with.

The other problem with DAB compared to FM is that if you listen to the same program on two different devices, they are perfectly in sync on FM, but due to the chip technology decoding the DAB signal are often several seconds out of sync, which is very annoying.

I adopted about 10 years ago and my first and only DAB receiver, Tranciva brand, was much loved at first but lately the reception had become very ropey (inner city London) with the gargling in mud sound never far away and now it has conked out completely! Not great longevity compared to an FM receiver that will basically never die... DAB+ may fix some of the audio quality/reception issues but UK seemed reluctant to adopt because of the existing DAB users I suppose.

We got a screen/speaker for the kitchen 2 years ago and will never look back at DAB or even FM for in-house radio. The functionality of say the Global Player app (Capital etc) that shows you show info and previous and next 2 songs playing is a much functionally richer experience, plus the bonus of voice control when you've got your hands in the sink.

For outside of the home coverage, I'd rather we invested (and regulated!) for a decent mobile data signal coverage nationwide than throw more good money after bad down the DAB(+) well. FM can get a stay of execution as long as there is a measurable user base.

"protecting UK radio stations' accessibility"- DAB does nothing for accessibility, if you want accessible radio stations then you need FM or AM so they can be recieved with little more than a diode and an earpiece. Requiring complicated digital decryption circuits is not accessible. Then there's the complete lack of decent signal strength for DAB in most places, another accessibility own goal.

DAB was crap when introduced and has not been upgraded to keep up with modern codecs, it does not provide a better service than FM and in many cases provides a worse service.

TURN OFF DAB!

KEEP FM!

Perhaps I am the only person in Britain for whom DAB is significantly better than FM, who knows?

I am a (well-matured) IT chap and privately I don't adopt new tech stuff very easily, mostly because the promised super features aka hype rarely materialise on the ground. So when I bought a cheapie DAB some years ago I was fully expecting to buy landfill. But no, it has been an enormous success in our home... so much so that we have now three of those things and no FM.

So, with tongue firmly in cheek:

TURN OFF FM!

KEEP DAB!

Oh dear... it seems the British sense of humour isn't what it used to be.

The UK gov shut down the best radio stations decades ago. I haven't really bothered with radio since Radio London went off the air and that was before most reading this were born.

If I listen to music in the house, it's from the vast store of my own CDs or recordings on my PC, if it's in my workshop I have a Chinese I pod thingy that holds elleventy nine gigas of stuff I have saved on it.

Either way there are no ads, breaks in signal or anything I don't want to listen to.

Oh and the radio stations here in Spain are great if you like Hotel California several times a day every day for years but very little of anything new.

Over the last 15-20 years, I have tried various DAB radio receivers at various times while living in a bunch of different places. Admittedly, no major cities but various towns and villages and rural places in different bits of England and Scotland.

At no point has DAB worked. I think the most stations I ever managed to pick up was about 7 or 8 and, of those, half of them were stations that I wasn't interested in hearing and all of them arrived with a sound quality that could be generously described as "variable" but was probably more accurately described as "a garbled, bubbly stream of unpleasant digital artifacts".

Why the hell are they still flogging this dead and decomposing horse? Is it just utter technological stupidity or did someone get paid a lot of money to promote and support this utter monstrosity? Is there a worldwide champions league for governments based on how technologically incompetent they are and, if so, does anyone anywhere stand a chance of knocking the UK government off the top spot?

Both FM and DAB are marginal in my house because a decade back I had the solid walls insulated with Celotex, which is faced with aluminium foil. This makes the house an ad hoc, slightly leaky Faraday cage, which is perfect for avoiding interference from the dozen or so WiFi stations in the neighbouring houses (one's an HMO with at least six WiFis), but a bugger for radio, especially as the nearest transmitter is about as far away as it can be and still work. The result is that FM is always accompanied by a noticeable hiss and DAB may or may not work depending on the whim of the gods that day(*).

Because of this I've taken to listening over the net. A tablet plus cheap Bluetooth speaker works wonderfully for speech radio, with much greater clarity than OTA broadcast. You need slightly better kit for Radio 3 but it's worth it to avoid the frying bacon acoustic accompaniment. When I've got time I intend to build a streaming radio with a Raspberry Pi.

(*) And for some reason my Amazon Basics clone of an Instant Pot shuts down DAB reception like a big red emergency switch. Pot on, kitchen radio off.

I have a DAB Roberts Gemini 49, must be nearly 20 years old. Rechargeable, used all the time, in the garage, down the garden, in the workshop, in the bathroom, all over the place. It's brilliant, half a busted antenna, still gets a strong signal. DAB in the car is also good, I've not had any problems with the BBC National ensemble, very rare I lose signal.

Audio quality, let's be realistic here, the Roberts has a 3 inch speaker. The car makes wind and tyre noise when it's moving, there's nothing between AM/FM and DAB for quality except for the RFI that affects the analogue modes.

Although increasingly I use a bluetooth speaker with my phone to listen to French radio stations, I do like the convenience of DAB and its RFI free service.

Unfortunately for them, their listeners did not care. They're now losing listeners all the time.

No offence to anyone but who the hell wants to wait for a song (via FM or DAB) whilst listening to ads, when i can just stream the thing from someplace. Obviously one (or more) of Bosis' chums has invested heavily and needs a "favour"

Eh? Maybe I’ve missed your point but how do I listen to The Today Program on Radio 4 while driving to work?

My last car had dab, and I tried it for a while, but it wasn't long before I switched back to FM. Not only was there vastly better coverage, the bandwidth stuffing used on dab ended up giving noticeably worse performance than FM. Also, when FN does start to fade out, you get plenty of warning and the noise background rises.

My current car also has DAB. I've never used it. Mind you, these days I usually plug in my iRiver H320 and listen to my choice of music.

We had two DAB radios, both recently failed.

I was shocked to find after five years of ownership, that the car radio has DAB, one day I might try it, though the main reason for turning the unit on, is to enable hands-free mobile response for urgent calls. The radio is normally muted unless I am alone, though I might listen to FM for traffic information or rarely to a non-commercial radio station.

If a 'SMART speaker' works as well as a smart mobile, I know why I have never bothered with one.

I have loads of FM radio about the place all still working after many years 100% even the one in the shed.

DAB needs an external aerial here and is rubbish signal strength.

Yes I like variety but I have bought a couple of DAB radio to use in places like the garden and no good.

Smart speakers are ok but you need a good internet - here in the sticks of course .....

Seriously. All I wanted was a small radio set for the bedroom, to replace an ailing FM set. My living-room set has a rooftop FM aerial and it's way better than DAB, but I can see the point of DAB in a small set so I tried buying one for the bedroom.

But every single one of the sets on sale in local shops featured a clock that emitted light 24/7. I would like the luxury of being able to go to sleep without a light on in the room, and I don't want to just unplug the thing every night because my bedroom plugs are hard to reach. Maybe they want me to buy one of those extension leads with individual switchable sockets on it? What's wrong with putting in some means of switching off the display light? Of course any attempt to contact the manufacturers to suggest clever ideas like this, is likely to reach nothing more than a brick wall of frontline support whose job is to trick you into being happy with what they have and make sure your query goes no further.

We've got a DAB radio in the bedroom and due to the same problem I've stuck black tape over the display so it doesn't act as a sodding night-light.

DAB reception is good where we live; I like the fact the radio in the kitchen displays the composer and title of the track currently being played (Classic FM).

The car radio uses FM, so don't have many reception problems when driving around.

Best of both worlds.

Streaming via Sonos at home, DAB in the car. Has to be DAB to listen to BBC 6 Music.

I think the real problem is that DAB never had a "USP" to draw in a committed audience. The traditionalists happy with FM don't see the point in buying more expensive fussier kit for no quality or service advantage; the extra stations on DAB are mainly recycled BBC audio wallpaper. Meanwhile the people who have the radio on for local news have found better alternatives on their mobile phones and other devices. Ofcom should have made it easier and cheaper to get onto DAB than be a pirate.

For what it's worth I get better DAB than FM reception but everyone's got their own story on that.

Sometimes the old technology is well suited to its job [FM] and does not need replacing.

This is particularly true of FM radio which in general functions quite well and gets almost everywere.

DABS was a good idea that never really took off and has proven itself to be not as good as promised.

Let FM be for the people that want it and accept DABS had its chance which has now passed.

DABS can join VHS, Betamax, Video2000 and Videodisc etc etc as ideas that have had their time.

The only idea pushing DABS was the idea to sell off the FM frequencies for 'many shekels' :)

DAB is just a means of delivering content to listeners. Smart speakers won’t be forced to include DAB hardware, all they’ll need to do is stream internet radio, which most if not all stations broadcasting on DAB do anyway. So what it comes down to is not “force the users to listen to evil DAB”, but rather “make internet radio available to anyone who wants it on their devices”.

They screwed up the technical implementation of DAB by trying to squeeze too many channels into too little bandwidth so that they could make extra money from the additional channels. Obviously time has told that the quality was not acceptable to the primary user base.

So, lesson to those looking to force things - learn from your mistakes, particularly as you are about to make another one.

The Internet has largely taken over from many forms of previous listening and video with the large selection of video streaming and recently the addition of Sky as a streaming service rather than a satellite service.

I'm left wondering if Sky will re-brand as Ground as part of this since most telephone cables are now underground.

So, what does this leave - FM as it works for those that are in their cars and want local info for things like company and info on traffic jams, but we have Waze and its peers to provide some of that info now.

It therefore makes no sense to keep trying to flog a dead technology in the vain attempt to try and monetise something from their bad decisions.

I'm also not getting how they think they can force a broadcast medium on a remote Internet speaker that was not designed to do that sort of stuff. Do they expect that each of the smart speaker vendors will have to accept all the local and regional channels at zero cost ??

How would they propose to get the local regional stations to the broadcast vendors - over DAB perhaps ?? Yea, that will work fine.

Many local radio stations already do Internet streaming as DAB was so crappy, so there is simply no need for any of this.