On Fri, 5 Mar 2010 10:14:22 +0530 sajan venniyoor <venniy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 9:40 AM, Gora Mohanty <g...@sarai.net> > wrote: > > > Auroville Radio is doing just speech, right? I really do not > > think > > that music will work on a GPRS connection, but do you have any > plans > > of trying? > > > Auroville Radio streams a fair amount of music, I believe. At > least, I have listened to some excellent classical music on one > of their two channels (though not on my mobile). [...] Oh, good. I should note that I have no actual experience of trying streaming music over low-bandwidth networks. I was just going by the bandwidth requirements cited by friends doing Internet music radio. It is possible that they were serving higher-quality streams. > Another thought: If streaming speech over GPRS is working well, it > > ought to be possible to send similar audio back to the radio > > station. Thus, one could have a live radio chat, or something > > like citizen journalism. > > > Well, there *is* something called voice telephony, and it's been > around for a while... Radio stations routinely do live chats > (phone-ins, phone-outs) and I don't think data streaming is > really needed for basic stuff like that. The great advantages of > streaming radio over GPRS is that (1) it gets around the > Kafka-in-Pandemonium world of radio regulation in India and (2) > the signal goes a hell of a long way compared to FM radio. > > I am not sure, though, if there are any inherent advantages in > using skype-over-mobile or similar applications in favour of > normal voice calls for routine phone-ins or field reports. Yes, telephony is what I was thinking about. The advantage here would be cost, as GPRS data should be cheaper than normal voice data. Your first point about streaming radio over GPRS is well taken, and that was also my first thought in the context of community radio. Regards, Gora Join the Community Radio Forum. For membership details, please go to www.crforum.in
