The author is chairman of Digital Radio Mondiale.
When is the last time you heard a shortwave radio transmission? And why should you put up with possible crackly audio and some interference when we have now internet, satellites, FM and all forms of digital radio?
This holds true if you are in London, Boston, Paris or Toronto. But what if you are on an island in Indonesia, or find yourself in west China, in Kashmir or in Brazilian Amazonia? Because, whether we like it or not, there are several remote places in this vast world, many of which still depend on shortwave broadcasting.
In the past (think the Cold War) a lot of people were able to obtain free information from the international shortwave program. Many international broadcasters were running expensive, energy-guzzling transmitters for this frequency band “without borders” that ranges from 1.7–30 MHz…
