Internet Radio
Ringtone.net setup Severn FM® in 2011 and continues to own and operate the Internet Radio Station from their Studio in Hardwicke, Gloucester, UK. We designed and customer built all of the technology used in providing the service including our own self hosted Icecast2 streaming server and webservices.
Small Scale DAB
Ofcom operated a SmallScale DAB Trial in Brighton, UK between September 2012 and January 2013. This got our attention as our attempts to join the then proposed new Multiplex to cover Gloucestershire, failed due to the model not being appropriate for our business (high costs and the large coverage area). We visited Ofcom’s Radio Monitoring Station in Baldock in November 2014 and were very impressed with what their Engineering Team had achieved with Software Defined Radio (SDR). We believed this was something Ringtone.net Ltd could operate due to the expertise we have built over the past decade in delivery large technical programmes of work. We responded to the consultation that Ofcom produced (here) and started to plan how we could be involved.
We purchased test equipment (Hack RFs, low powered PCs, Dell Servers etc) and became involved with the Open Digital Radio mmbTools forum and started to get involved. In March 2015 we produced our first ‘static file” ETI Ensemble and transmitted it in a Faraday Cage to a radio receiver (under Suppressed Radiation Conditions). It wasn’t long before we had a full end to end DAB transmission chain in place with 3 ‘Programmes’ (Radio Stations) included in the Mux (Multiplex). The Faraday Cage was a bit cumbersome to work with, so we have moved to using a direct very low power connection between our SDR peripheral and a software based DAB receiver running on a PC.
We did apply to become a Small Scale DAB Trial Licence holder however our application wasn’t successful.
We already have a working DAB Transmission Chain under supressed Radiation Conditions to comply, with UK Legislation.
Radio Stills
