I would love to have been a fly on the wall at recent meetings between Digital Radio UK and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders at the SMMT's what-recession HQ in Belgravia, Mayfair, when they were tackling the topic I have been boring ERT with for the past 10 years – that in-car listening is the big block to switching off analogue radio.

DRUK is currently stocking up on highly-paid staff, whose first move was to dream up the radio amnesty.

This offers a 10 per cent discount on a DAB radio when an analogue wireless is traded in. The radios will then be expensively checked and shipped to African villages, where there is little mains power and few people can afford batteries.

And 10 per cent is less than the VAT and only what dealers routinely offer on special deals, anyway. Pure genius.

But the fact that DRUK and the SMMT are at least now talking does suggest that the penny has finally dropped.

Without easy in-car DAB, the 2015 date is out of the question and the chances of getting easy in-car DAB by 2015 is a pipe dream.

Consider the facts that DRUK, its predecessor DRDB and the advisers behind the Digital Economy Act have been ducking.

Whatever the SMMT has or has not been doing for the past 15 years of DAB, the fact is that cars and vans are still being sold without a DAB option and without an aerial that will allow a dashboard DAB radio retrofit.

Even if the UK were not too small a market to influence world motor design, it takes the motor trade around five years to change production.

There are currently around 33 million vehicles driving around without DAB and because many people like to keep their cars for a while, there will still be around 20 million non-DAB vehicles by 2015.

Around a fifth of radio is listened to in-car and much of that is prime time, so worth more in advertising. In-car traffic data relies on FM, too – from the Classic FM Traffic Message Channel – not DAB.

The only DAB retrofit option that avoids modifying the car’s electrics and invalidating car warranties is Pure’s Highway, which re-broadcasts an FM signal to an existing dashboard radio.

The re-broadcast is on spare frequencies that change round the country and are at the mercy of pirates who blast out rock at high power, with RDS traffic tags to grab receivers, and apparently now without fear of police action from Ofcom.

Any attempt to create a nationwide free frequency for DAB re-broadcast would just provide a nice clear channel for the pirates.

The trade bodies have so far been curiously silent about the interference issue. Can anyone from DRUK, SMMT or Intellect, put hand on heart and say they have actually tried setting up a Highway for themselves?

If so, I'd love to hear from them, because I haven’t for a year or so, and Pure has kindly loaned me a Highway to give it a fresh road test for next month's ERT magazine column.

I genuinely and sincerely hope I can report that the interference problem is not as bad as I remember. Any practical tips from DRUK, SMMT and Intellect would be most welcome. 

Barry Fox