There is a nice post on the Public Radio Player (PRP) blog about some challenges for Internet radio when distributed over mobile wireless networks and some strategies used in the PRP.
“A dropped stream is the nemesis of any regular Public Radio Tuner user. Nothing is worse than being caught up in a great public radio program and have it suddenly cut out….”
Some challenges can be expected:
- loss of signal while roaming from cell to cell. Networks are optimized for voice calls but not for data yet.
- minimal bitrate like 32 kbps is desirable but connection is still not guaranteed and sound quality is no great
- buffers have to be implemented in receiver to mitigate signal loss.
Results of a survey made by PC World suggest that 3G coverage may not be adequate for the delivery of sustained bitrates in major cities in USA. Like this table shows, networks speeds can be impressive but their reliability vary greatly so that live radio transmissions may be hard to achieve.
There is certainly a lot of room for experimentation here in this new area but I tend to believe that it could take a while before we see 3G replace true “physical layer” broadcast networks for live transmissions.
Tags: 3G, broadcasting 2.0, Internet streaming, mobile, mobile phones, radio
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