Lucent Digital Radio Announces Successful Over-The-Air Test of Digital Audio Broadcast System With 90.5 WBJB-FM

Business Wire, June 2, 1999

WARREN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 2, 1999--

Lucent Digital Radio, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), today announced that it has successfully tested its In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) system, live and over the air, with National Public Radio (NPR ) member station WBJB-FM. The tests showed that there was no degradation of the host FM analog channel during the transmission of the digital FM signal over the same band.

Lucent began field-testing with WBJB-FM in April, 1999 to evaluate a range of technical issues associated with digital FM radio. WBJB-FM, in Lincroft, New Jersey, is the first NPR member station to test the current generation of IBOC DAB systems.

"This successful test of an IBOC signal during a live broadcast is an important milestone on the road to providing digital capabilities for enabling new radio features that consumers want," said Suren Pai, president of Lucent Digital Radio. "We are on target and on time with our system testing. Working with WBJB-FM allows us to test our system with an organization that is in the technical vanguard of radio."

Lucent Digital Radio expects to have complete results from its IBOC testing by the end of 1999. It expects to complete its IBOC system by 2000.

IBOC, which is the leading candidate for the U.S. standard for DAB, uses existing radio spectrum allocations - no new allocations or auctions are required. IBOC DAB will provide AM radio with interference-free FM audio quality, and FM with near-CD audio quality. It will be able to accommodate up to 100 Kb/s of data transport for innovative new data services. The system will also provide broadcasters with a low-cost transition path to digital technology, creating the potential for new revenue opportunities.

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.

Lucent Technologies and its research and development unit, Bell Laboratories, have been leaders in the digital encoding of information used in communications systems, and have been at the forefront of digital audio broadcasting (DAB) technology for the past decade.

In January, Lucent Digital Radio announced a significant technical advance, called Multi-Streaming, that solves the problem of providing high-quality digital audio reception over a coverage area equal to that of current analog FM stations.

Lucent Digital Radio draws on several patented digital audio and channel coding techniques that provide robust digital signal delivery in an impaired broadcast channel, including Lucent's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) technology, which delivers near-CD quality audio at 96 Kb/s; 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.

For more information about Lucent Digital Radio, please contact William Casey, Director, Marketing & Sales, on 908-508-7008 or williamcasey@lucent.com. The Lucent Digital Radio Web site is 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.