Coverage

Close to 1.4 million adults will be reached by the Manchester
DAB multiplex

Carriage charges and rates
C-DSP
Carriage charges for local community radio services which qualify for a Community
Digital Sound Programme (C-DSP) licence are considered, subject to availability on a
case-by-case basis.
An indicative annual charge can be expected to be just over £2,000.

DSP
Carriage capacity charges for all other radio services – Digital Sound Programme
services (DSPs) fall into one of two categories:
Local DSPs – locally-based radio services with an annual turnover of less than
£200,000 and fewer than 20 employees, and,
Out of area DSPs – all other radio services that are either larger and/or based
outside our 63dBuV/m contour.

We anticipate we will carry 9 C-DSP services, up to 7 local DSPs and 9 out of area DSPs.
Please note we will be revealing our prices for DSP Carriage Customers shortly.

Kbps: 48, 40, 32 and value for money
The audio quality of you broadcast signal is measured in kilobits per second (kbps).
The latest audio encoding adopted by Manchester DAB can deliver ‘near FM’ audio
quality at 40 kbps occupying 30 capacity units (CUs) in DAB+ at error protection
level 3-A. The greater amount of capacity used to carry your service, the better the
audio quality, but also the more you will be charged for capacity. Similarly, the
longer you contract with Manchester DAB the lower the rate you will pay.
In order to get the best value for money, we recommend radio services book and
pre-pay for 12-months carriage at 40 kbps.

Other options are available such as carriage at 48 kbps or monthly pre-payment
(over a 12-month minimum term). However, these options, like paying for your
car’s road tax, work out more expensive for you in the long run.

Broadcast reliability over Manchester
From day one we will use three transmitters to form an overlapping network to
cover the Manchester and Salford wider area. We maintain these to a high
standard, but in the unlikely event of a failure at any one site, the other two
transmitters will deliver coverage to much of the area. In addition, for audio and
multiplexed signal distribution, we use a highly robust carrier grade network
between IPSs to deliver your output, along with others, to each transmitter.
This means that Manchester DAB can deliver this quality assured service to our
customers.

About our rates
Our carriage rates are all inclusive. This means that provided your radio service’s
programming output can be delivered over the internet at an acceptable level of
quality, there will be no additional charges for encoding, multiplexing or monitoring
your received signal. The only exception being that if your signal needs some
attention to bring it up to specification, we can supply you with a ‘black box’ for a
one-off charge of £200.

Should your audio drop out, we can arrange to send you an alert from our Network
Operations Centre which monitors all signals received, encoded, multiplexed and
distributed 24/7 every day of the year.