A first-of-its-kind course in DSB Systems benefiting ATU Member States and fully sponsored by ATU.

As part of the implementation of ATU’s Strategy for Introduction and Promotion of Digital Sound Broadcasting (DSB) in Africa and its initiative, the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) collaborated with ITU, AFRALTI, WorldDAB and DRM Consortiums, in putting together a first-of-its-kind specialized course on DSB systems under the ITU Academy.

ATU and AFRALTI are pleased to announce that the first cohort of the course have concluded training since commencement on 2nd May 2023. The special technical course was fully sponsored by ATU and benefitted a total of 100 students from across the 51 Member States (average of two students per Member State).

The one-month online course was delivered through ATU’s two capacity-building partners, namely: AFRALTI (English class) and ESMT (French class) both of which are ITU Centres of excellence on technical subjects – with AFRALTI now crowned with a global status as the ITU global academy training centre.

The course offered an in-depth technical review of the DAB+ and DRM30/DRM+ digital sound broadcasting standards. It also covered the formation of multiplexed audio streams with associated data and data services, the carriage of the multiplex and associated signaling, the broadcast transmission stream, and RF transmission modes and details. Further, the course included an overview of receiver products, regulatory aspects and transmission planning, among other practical implementation aspects of DSB.

While Analogue Sound Broadcasting (i.e. FM Radio) is and will remain a critical ICT service in the short and medium term, time is now to prepare Africa for the ultimate future of radio which will surely be DSB. ATU deems the course as fundamental in promoting DSB, and is in no way discounting analogue FM Radio: with the recent successful project on the optimization of the FM frequency channels for analogue FM Radio for Africa (i.e. the ITU’s GE84 Plan for Africa), ATU is in fact promoting both analogue (FM Radio) and digital radio (DSB) to ensure sound broadcasting (either analogue and/or digital) continues to play its crucial role now and into the future.