Lucent Digital Radio and Broadcast Electronics Announce Joint Testing Agreement for Digital Audio Broadcast System

Business Wire, July 12, 1999

WARREN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 1999--

Lucent Digital Radio, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), and Broadcast Electronics, a leader in the design and manufacture of radio broadcast equipment, today announced that they have agreed to jointly test transmitter technology that will facilitate Lucent Digital Radio's In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) system.

The Lucent Digital Radio system recently became the first IBOC system to successfully pass a digital signal over the same transmitter and antenna infrastructure without affecting the analog host signal. These historic tests, conducted at NPR member station WBJB-FM in Lincroft, New Jersey, will be followed by further system tests at WBJB-FM and at station WPST-FM, the flagship station of Nassau Broadcasting Partners.

Lucent Digital Radio and Broadcast Electronics will perform a series of field tests of the Lucent IBOC system at commercial radio stations and will also conduct laboratory waveform tests at Broadcast Electronics' facilities. These efforts represent a reasoned, systematic, and open approach to validating LDR's IBOC technology and software.

"Together, Broadcast Electronics and Lucent Digital Radio will conduct testing that is critical for the further development of our IBOC system and for the broadcast industry's readiness for the coming of digital radio," said Suren Pai, president of Lucent Digital Radio. "We're designing a scientifically valid field and laboratory testing program. And this type of partnership is important to the overall success and acceptance of IBOC. Without this type of open validation of a proposed technical standard for IBOC, broadcasters and receiver manufacturers can only guess at the capabilities of our concepts - or anyone else's."

Said Pai, "The radio industry is listening, and we will work side by side to deliver the answers that will assure all constituencies that IBOC is ready for the air. The combination of our software and the Broadcast Electronics hardware product line will offer formidable proof that IBOC is a reality, not a promise."

"We know that broadcasters are very interested in implementing a path to a digital future for the radio broadcasting industry," said John W. Pedlow, president and chief executive officer of Broadcast Electronics, Inc. "We expect to utilize the expertise of Broadcast Electronics' radio transmission systems and the proficiency of Lucent Digital Radio's digital system to develop a commercially viable transition path to IBOC for our broadcasting customers and their listeners."

Lucent Digital Radio's IBOC DAB system is an enhancement to current analog AM and FM radio broadcasting systems. It will provide greatly enhanced sound quality for AM radio and near-CD quality for FM radio, as well as interference-free reception and innovative new data services.

Lucent Digital Radio draws on several patented Lucent digital audio and channel coding techniques that provide robust digital signal delivery in an impaired broadcast channel, including Lucent's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC(TM)) technology, which delivers near-CD quality audio at 96 Kilobits per second; Unequal Error Protection, which prioritizes information based on its impact to audio quality; and Multi-Streaming, which provides for a more robust signal in an impaired channel.

The IBOC approach will allow broadcasters to introduce digital audio programming to listeners on their current dial positions using existing transmitters and antennas. IBOC DAB is both backward- and forward-compatible: current AM/FM receivers will still be able to receive the existing analog signals in the new system. When a station elects to turn off the analog signal in the future, IBOC DAB-compatible receivers will operate with the remaining all-digital signal.

Broadcast Electronics, Inc. (BE) designs, manufactures and markets leading products for the global radio broadcast industry. BE's offerings include the AudioVAULT(R) digital audio storage and control system, BE transmitters -- AM and FM transmission systems, and MARTI brand RPUs, STLs, and telephone codecs. This year BE celebrates its 40th Anniversary as a solutions provider exclusively to the radio broadcast industry.

For more information about Broadcast Electronics, please contact Rick Carpenter, Vice President, Engineering, on 217-224-9600 or rcarpent@bdcast.com. Information is also available on the Web site at www.bdcast.com.

Lucent Digital Radio is a Lucent Technologies venture with a mission to develop IBOC DAB technology for AM and FM broadcasting worldwide. LDR's IBOC system will be resistant to multipath and other forms of interference that impair current analog transmissions.

For more information about Lucent Digital Radio, please contact William Casey, Director, Marketing & Sales, on 908-580-7008 or williamcasey@lucent.com. Information is also available on the Web site at www.lucent.com/ldr.> Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N. J., designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm for the company. For more information on Lucent Technologies, visit the company's web site at www.lucent.com.