It grew out of some 20 years of development supported by the European Broadcasting Union.

Quite simply, the RDS Forum provides the mechanism whereby many experts share their knowledge about the system through occasional regular meetings, the medium of the internet and by the distribution of CD-ROMs, CONTAINING GUIDELINES, SPECIALISED DATA & SPECIFICATIONS.

In the last ten years the RDS Forum has proved its worth many times over: drafting and maintaining the worldwide IEC RDS standard, writing detailed RDS guidelines to show users how RDS should be implemented, and advising developers how to best implement all the RDS features as well as developing new ones using the ODA feature.

Thus, during 2005 Radiotext plus was developed as an important ODA enhancement of the original Radiotext feature.

The RDS universal communication protocol (UCEP) for broadcast service providers that ensures connectivity with the transmitter network using RDS encoders of different origin had already been updated several times, thus enabling the easy and economic implementation of all RDS features, including TMC and now also Radiotext plus. All RDS encoder manufacturers that are Members of the RDS Forum, have implemented the latest version (6.0.1) of the UECP.

FURTHERMORE the RDS Forum has negotiated a significant discount on behalf of the members in respect of a patent claim by Philips acting as agent for the BBC, Swedish Radio & Austrian Radio, and the RDS Forum is nowadays in a very strong position of knowledge to resist other patent claims that may arise.

The unjustified claims EON trademark claims of the consumer electronics company Grundig Multimedia BV were put to a halt, by undertaking in August 2000 a joint legal action against that company. The case was finally decided in April 2006. The EON trademark registration from Grundig was not valid and consequently cancelled for radio receivers applications and products containing them.

The RDS Forum continues an ongoing vital development role, running the ODA registrations office required to register new applications within RDS and secure their compatibility with the standardised RDS features.

RDS Forum successes must continue

The RDS Forum is the victim of its own success! RDS is now widely and correctly implemented with well over a 100 million RDS radios in use worldwide. It has been argued by some of our previous members that there is no longer any need for the RDS Forum to continue its activities. Consequently the RDS Forum has suffered a decline in membership support in the past years. Just think of the damage that would be caused to the RDS system, if implementations were allowed to ignore good practice, such as:

This sort of chaos and many more problems would only grow without the authority of the RDS Forum monitoring and where possible, correcting such errors.

New markets and broadcasters are emerging with a need to develop RDS for their use. For example the RDS Forum is fully aware of the possibilities that would exist to address displays for non-Latin characters, if these were really required.

In 2006, an RDS road testing programme to help manufacturers located in countries that don’t have any RDS on air, to evaluate the RDS functionality of their receiver products for the European market is likely to be developed.

Also, the IEC RDS standard is up for formal review in 2007. This is then a good opportunity for the RDS Forum 2006 to introduce a number of refinements that are considered to be necessary and which are the result of the experience
gained in the past, such as:

RDS Forum - annual meeting

The annual RDS Forum meeting is vitally important for new people working on these RDS developments in order to access personally the pool of knowledge and expertise within the RDS Forum membership who attend the meeting.

Without this opportunity it would be impossible to achieve the understanding and agreements that support the coherent implementation of RDS services and products worldwide.

The next annual RDS Forum meeting is scheduled to be held on 12/13 June 2006 at Hotel Victoria in Glion/Montreux (Switzerland).

A workshop on RDS IPR related issues was held on 27 April 2005 in London. This led to RDS Forum guidelines regarding the defencse against claims from a French consumer electronics manufacturer over licensing the use of the RDS logo.

Another specialised workshop on Radiotext plus is now planned to take place during the RDS Forum 2006.

RDS Forum - long term need

The present RDS Forum membership acknowledges that eventually, when the Digital Radio systems are in widespread use, there may no longer be a role for the Forum; however, this is unlikely to be the case for another ten years or so.

In the meantime, in order to maintain the success and business viability of the Radio Data System, the functions of the RDS Forum will need a small amount of financial support through the full membership fee at the modest sum of EUR 1500 per annum.

This is a very small price to pay for the stability and continued commercial success of the Radio Data System.

Consider the sum in relation to the total investment your company has already made in RDS. It will be a very good investment to ensure proper delivery of RDS services and products to the millions of listeners who deserve to be well served with the benefits of RDS.

Johnny Beerling, Chairman

Dietmar Kopitz, Chief Executive

Bev Marks, Secretary & Treasurer