Population:	70.6 million
Coverage:	3%

Last update: 24-01-2008

TRT, the Turkish Broadcasting Corporation, re-launched DAB test transmissions in Band III in Ankara (the capital) on the 1st March 2002. One transmitter covers the Ankara city centre and reaches approximately 2 million people.

An SFN (Single Frequency Network) application had been planned in Ankara with the addition of a 1Kw new transmitter. In order to increase the awareness of DAB, the new 1Kw transmitter will be transferred to Istanbul, the biggest city of Turkey.

There are four radio channels, which are also simulcast in FM. One of them is Radio-1, which broadcasts primarily news, weather, information, education, entertainment and kids programmes. The other channels, TRT-FM, Radio-4 and Tourism Radio play Turkish pop, folk and traditional music. In addition to these radio programs, SI (Service Information) PAD (Program Associated Data) including the broadcasters name, channel name and program type are also transmitted on digital radio together with Non-PAD data such as weather and road/traffic information.

TRT has planned to distribute the DAB ETI signal via the existing MCPC DVB-S infrastructure. After the installation of the 1kw transmitter and the transmission of the DAB ETI signal, TRT DAB signals will reach approximately 8 million listeners.

TRT has also bought equipment for broadcast streaming services and is ready to develop new services based on IP, one of the more powerful and attractive multimedia features of DAB. The equipment is able to carry out several IP services on the same platform. The IP services may be broadcast in one or more N-PAD channel. With such a product, MPEG 4 video can be broadcast over DAB, allowing to enhance the audio with rich services (web pages, video clips, electronic program guide, vote, purchase tickets services) or added radio services (cartoons, news files, games, city information) or real time streaming (video, file downloading).
TRT plans to broadcast MPEG-4 video over DAB in the near future. For this application, new software and MPEG-4 Video Encoder which is capable of IP encapsulation will be added.