Paul Golder writes for the Brentwood Gazette

Big news for Phoenix FM this week as we are pleased to announce we will be on DAB soon!

Last year, Ofcom announced that they were issuing new DAB licences throughout London and the south east.

London and Essex already has DAB, of course – but there are currently very few companies operating DAB multiplexes, the system by which stations can get on air.

This means that the cost of new stations like us being carried on DAB is very high. We would have had to double or triple our income to get ourselves on digital radio in the past!

Ofcom’s announcement was aimed at getting more community stations on board by letting them run their own multiplexes at a fraction of the cost.

But there’s a lot of interest in getting these licences, so we teamed up with Gateway 97.8 in Basildon to form a new group called East London and Essex Digital to bid for the local licence, which stretches from Brentwood and Basildon all the way up to East Ham and Wanstead.

After a 13 month wait, we received the fantastic news this week that our bid was successful. It’s great news for us as it will not only increase our terrestrial audience by up to 1.2 million people, but we have the option of adding extra services in the future – maybe even a Phoenix FM 2!

We will also be able to increase radio choice and get more stations like us on air in Essex and East London. At least seven of the new stations our multiplex will carry have to be non-profit community radio stations like us.

There’s a lot of hard work ahead now before it becomes a reality, but we’re hoping to launch all the new radio services in Spring next year.