On 5/26/04, John Hibbs wrote:
What would happen if micro radio would be so ubiquitous (and affordable)
that children everywhere would have a frequent opportunity to be their
own content developers? broadcasters? Wouldn't this activity compare to
the piano recital? Christmas play? soccer game? How much value arises
when the speaker knows that her grandmother is listening? or even the
mayor? what internal value comes to those who have been on the
radio?
What does it take to organise a reference demonstration of this simple
thesis?
Not much really - except that it would be quite illegal in most
countries, due to the same kind of thinking that has paralysed South
Africa (cf the article posted by bridges.org very recently on this list)
on the subject of WiFi and VoIP.
Here are the building blocks of micro-radio:
* An inexpensive low power transmitter
* Antenna
* Microphone
* Recording device
* Editing device
* Playback device (may be the same as the recording device)
As I write this, I am listening to jazz on the radio, broadcast on the
Net by www.attentionspanradio.net and sent from my sound card to the
input jack of a tiny FM transmitter with a rudimentary antenna (their
d-i-y designs can be downloaded conveniently from
http:///www.radiophony.com, the Radiophony website), which cost a total
of IRs 200 to assemble, and the long-life rechargeable 12V battery which
powers it cost IRs 90. FYI, Rs 300 is approximately USD 6.5 these days.
The signal is just powerful enough to reach every room in the house.
For one account of what internal value really means, browse through
our website (Radiophony is promoted by Dr Arun Mehta and myself, both of
us are present on this list), where we describe the experience of
setting up India's first rural radio station (later shut down by some
bureaucrats). There are really no words to describe the thrill so
visible on the faces of villagers as they heard their voices on their
radio (in fact, they later named their station Mana Radio, which means
Our Radio in the local - Telugu - language). The station was powered by
a similar transmitter as the one I am listening through now, and with a
suitably placed antenna, every home (within half a kilometer from the
antenna mast) could tune in to their own village station.
But to return to the question raised by John Hibbs, what would it take
to 'scientifically' demonstrate the internal value? What would it take
to make radio ubiquitous and affordable?
By international agreement, the frequencies from 87.5 MHz to 108 MHz are
reserved for public broadcasting over FM. This fact has had a very
useful outcome, in that consumer FM radio receivers are extraordinarily
cheap in most parts of the world. This means that FM radio listening is
affordable, for the most part, but at the same time, the restricted band
of frequencies for the purpose has led to a commonly expressed fear
psychosis that the spectrum is a scarce commodity. Market forces usually
ensure that scarcity drives up prices, and in the case of FM broadcast
license fees or spectrum usage charges, this is true.
In the US, one of the world's heaviest users of spectrum in the FM band,
prices are sky-high, and the government has been stepping back from
protectionist measures that secured a place for public service radio.
Most public service radio frequencies are held by well-funded
organisations, while commercial radio has become massively dominated by
a very few media companies, and there does not seem to be much scope for
independent micro-radio to flourish, on the surface.
The reality is somewhat different.
Actually there are many 'pirate' stations that broadcast independent
content, and a groundswell movement that seeks to open the spectrum for
more micro-radio. The FCC has been forced to take note of the pioneering
study by the Prometheus Project (http://www.prometheusradio.org/) and a
hearing on Localism in Broadcasting will take place today (May 26) in
Rapid City, South Dakota. Sen John McCain is also expected to introduce
a legislation shortly to mandate bandwidth for low power radio.
Much more can be done to make the technology easily available.
The circuit on our website is not ideally temperature stable nor
filtered to a very high quality (US standards militate towards a
separation of 200 KHz between stations) - it was designed for low cost
and easy component availability.
What is needed is a handy circuit that can be easily tuned to lock onto
frequencies 200 KHz apart, encased in a simple, cheap and hardy box, and
an accompanying range of easy to build and tune antennae, so that
thousands of little stations can be set up within a few hundred meters
of each other, without the need for expensive one time use
instrumentation.
It won't take much to upgrade the technology of consumer level devices
to achieve the specifications outlined above - but someone must get down
and fine-tune them, and someone else must work out the best low
