On behalf of the thousands of community media around Europe, the Community Media Forum Europe (CMFE) and AMARC-Europe (the European regional section of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters) wrote, on 19 December 2011, a letter to Neelie Kroes, The European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda.

In this letter we ask Ms Kroes to enter into a dialogue with us:

• To include necessary actions in the Digital Agenda to accommodate community (local) media to enter the digital broadcasting era;
• To enforce the use of open standard, hybrid digital radio receivers;
• To support and promote the adoption of DRM+ and
• To monitor the revision of national FM frequency policies among member states.

The widely supported and promoted digitalization technology, DAB(+), although the preferred technology in large(r) coverage areas, is in many cases unsuitable for community (local) radio stations. We therefore plea for preservation of the FM Band for radio broadcasting and support for the introduction of DRM+ standard on FM and eventually even on Band III alongside DAB(+).

In this way the richness, diversity and pluralism of the media sector is best guaranteed, respecting the contribution of thousands community (local) radio stations, their ten thousands of practitioners (active European citizens) and millions of listeners.

The full letter can be downloaded at: letter_to_EC.pdf