Montreal company capitalizing on DAB infrastructure for application deployment

Société Radio Numérique (SRN), a Montreal applications platform developer, hopes to help Canadian broadcasters capitalize on their digital audio broadcast (DAB) infrastructure to deliver innovative and compelling content to Canadians. SRN has developed a platform, dubbed Servo, that will allow broadcasters to use their over-the-air terrestrial infrastructure to deliver applications such as digital signage or even terrestrial for-pay radio services, as contemplated by CHUM Ltd. (RoW, Feb. 25/04). The upstart company, which formed about two years ago and has six employees, has already held discussions with the country’s major broadcasters, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), CHUM and Astral Media. News of a development relationship between SRN and CBC will soon become public, according to the company’s implementation director. SRN’s Yanick Abraham won’t divulge details to Report on Wireless, but does say the company has been an experimental partner with the CBC for the past year and a half and there will be news coming out in the next month or so. "This is an experimental partnership, but on all the potential applications or what’s coming out from the CBC, I cannot disclose at the moment," he tells RoW. In addition to partnership news, there will be announcements forthcoming on international sales of the company’s Servo platform, he adds. Servo is a datacasting manager that allows broadcasters to take content from a variety of sources, whether it be from the Internet, FTP, or streaming content, and deliver it to various devices. The platform can also allow the broadcaster to determine the sending time. "Is it a carousel to send (the content) all the time? Do I want to send it once a month, or once a week? Do I want to send it to everybody or to a group of people? This is what Servo can do," Abraham explains. Digital signage is a particularly attractive application, and DAB can add a more dynamic feel without the cost of connecting each sign to the Internet. This can be likened to electronic billboards where the content is refreshed as often as the advertiser would like. It is these types of business-to-business applications that will get the most attention in the early days because the cost of a DAB receiver is still relatively expensive. Astral, which has an outdoor advertising division, has also considered the company’s product. But, says Abraham, the cost of the screens are still highly priced. The other issue is that broadcasters are in wait-and-see mode with respect to DAB. "They’re waiting for the first one to come out with a solution and then more will follow. But at the end of 2004 or the beginning of 2005, we’re going to see a lot more DAB applications (coming out)," he tells RoW. Abraham explains that he’s already seeing this type of application at gas stations and corner stores in the province of Quebec. But Servo has further uses such as transmitting traffic information and entertainment content to vehicles. SRN isn’t talking only to Canadian broadcasters. The company visited Taiwan and Korea on a recent Quebec-Asia trade mission and found considerable interest in its platform. Abraham says the Koreans were "overwhelmed by our solution" and he expects the company to make some sales there in the future.

Montreal company capitalizing on DAB infrastructure for application deployment

News | May 19, 2004

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