The UK government has just launched its ‘be ready’ campaign, encouraging citizens to be prepared for survival in emergencies. This includes access to a battery-powered radio – but the advice comes months after the UK’s only guaranteed nationwide signal, Radio 4 Longwave, was switched off.
With supplies of basics including food and water nowadays depending upon complicated distribution networks, and services increasingly moving online, the country is arguably more vulnerable than it has ever been when infrastructure is disrupted. One key area of concern is ‘communication and information’, with the government recommending that people keep a battery-operated or wind-up radio in reserve. ‘For updates during outages,’ the advice stipulates, ‘write down frequencies of any national or local radio stations you use for news.’
The government advice only mentions FM radio, in spite of the fact that FM is dependent upon local transmitters – which might also be affected by any local calamity such as a storm or power outage. FM is short-range and cannot travel easily from alternative transmitters further away. It is also patchy, with many rural areas struggling to get a reliable signal. Finally, FM radios require a lot of power, and are unlikely to last very long on a single set of batteries.
Resilience in emergencies is one of the key advantages of AM (longwave or mediumwave) radio, and one of the main reasons why the Campaign to Keep AM Alive continues to advocate for its continued use. With a network of only around 20 transmitters, the BBC is able to broadcast Radio 5 on mediumwave reliably across the entire country. In light of the government’s new advice, efforts should be made to ensure that the channel’s frequencies – 693kHz and 909 kHz – continue to be mentioned on-air, so that people know where to tune to when the internet is down and other transmissions cease operating.
The recent shut down of many websites based on the PHP programming language is just the latest in a series of indicators showing how vulnerable the internet is. As well as bugs and the potential for hackers to deliberately bring websites down, there is also a danger that a major geomagnetic storm from the Sun – similar to the Carrington Event that disrupted telegraph communications in 1859 – could knock out satellites and bring down the internet. Storms and floods – made more likely with climate change – can also disable local infrastructure. Storm Austen, currently afflicting the south-west of England with winds of up to 70mph, is one example of how local services can be severely disrupted.
The main advantage of old-fashioned AM radio is its ability to travel large distances, potentially reaching into an area suffering from power outage or other disruption from outside, and that it does not depend upon vulnerable internet infrastructure. It can also be received cheaply and easily using wind-up radios, and does not require very much battery power to receive compared to FM and digital signals, so a back-up radio will work for longer on AM.
The most effective means of maintaining a resilient communications infrastructure would have been to retain transmissions of Radio 4 Longwave nationally on 198kHz from just three transmitters; unfortunately and short-sightedly, this option was switched off in June of this year. The government refused to intervene in the BBC’s decision to do this, stating that it was a ‘matter for the BBC’ and seemingly forgetting the importance of this piece of national infrastructure. The second-best option, a national network of mediumwave transmitters that covers almost the entire country, is still operating – and we continue to petition the BBC and the government to ensure that this remains the case. Please sign our petition to keep mediumwave if you agree:
You can read the government’s ‘be ready’ guidance in full at the following website:
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