BROADCASTING SATELLITE SERVICE (SOUND) WHAT THE INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTER NEEDS

BBC World Service broadcasts radio programmes world wide in 39 languages. Coverage is mainly via high frequency transmitters situated in the UK and at overseas relay bases. Political changes and spectrum de-regulation have opened up ''local'' coverage opportunities, improving the penetration, audio quality and technical reliability of broadcasts to key urban audiences. BSS (Sound) has the potential to provide global, direct broadcaster to listener services of high quality and with good system security and coverage reliability. World Service needs to be sure that development of appropriate delivery systems and receivers takes place together before undertaking largescale transfers of radio services from HF to BSS (Sound).