MUMBAI: Norway could become the first country to completely do away with FM radio, after deciding that from 2017 it will entirely switch to Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) for standard over-the-air audio transmissions.

The country has decided to shut down FM radio completely, a move that the Norwegian Ministry of Culture initially proposed in 2011. However, the idea has been approved after a lengthy wait of four years. According to reports, the Norwegian government now believes that it has all the required tools to move away from FM radio.

A number of reasons have been said to result in the change of radio transmission. DAB is said to offer a high audio quality as compared to FM, while also offering additional functionality. According to the Norwegian government, transmitting channels over DAB is far less expensive than FM transmission.

In addition to these, digital radio is also capable of broadcasting several more stations simultaneously. Norway currently has five national FM radio channels, however, 22 are available on DAB, with the capacity to host 20 additional channels.

Norway is expected to start shutting down its FM radio stations from 11 January 2017. There should not be too much trouble during transition since digital radio has available in Norway since 1995, although in a slight limited capacity at that time.