Solent Wireless

Nearly 9 years ago the Trial Portsmouth DAB multiplex launched (our anniversary is a few weeks away), and in that time we didn’t think any of us could have foreseen that a 9 month trial would turn in to a 9 year trial! Yesterday, Ofcom announced that they have awarded us at Angel Radio a full time DAB multiplex licence for Portsmouth and naturally we are delighted with the news.

For the time being our trial licence continues, and we hope to have more news in the near future about the transition to our full licence. But for the time being, we are happy at being able to formally secure a long term future for the Portsmouth DAB multiplex. Thank you so much for supporting us on this journey. Thank you also to our stations that have backed us.

BROADCASTERS: Are you interested in your station being transmitted on DAB+ digital radio to the Portsmouth area? We have capacity available. Message us for more information by 18:00 on Thursday 23rd May 2024.

You may have noticed over the last few months services have left our Portsmouth DAB multiplex and have not been replaced. Angel Radio, the organisation behind Solent Wireless, recently applied to Ofcom for a long-term DAB multiplex licence for Portsmouth. If successful, it will mean we can move off our temporary(!) trial licence on to a new licence which will potentially last up to 12 years.

One of the requirements is that we have to reserve a fixed amount of capacity for community radio services. We currently broadcast a number of not-for-profit services, however going forward we will have less available capacity for commercial services.

Because our current trial licence expires on 31st December 2023, and because we will have less capacity available on the multiplex we have decided to not replace services that have chosen to leave the multiplex for the time being. This will ensure that we have sufficient capacity to accommodate all broadcasting services should be awarded a long-term licence.

We are still broadcasting 24 services, which we think is pretty impressive considering we were awarded our trial licence on the basis of providing 6 services!

Please be advised we are undertaking various engineering work this Friday.

There will be an outage at Fort Widley while we install a brand new transmitter.

There will be outages at both Fort Widley and Leigh Park transmitters while we make a change to our multiplexer.

The works will take place after 10:00 and we will try to keep outages as short as absolutely necessary.

For the Christmas period we have temporarily added Christmas Music Radio to our Portsmouth DAB multiplex. The station supports local charities in our area and play the best Christmas songs 24 hours a day on DAB Digital Radio from Santa’s grotto!

In other news, Skylab Radio has decided to come off digital radio in Portsmouth. We wish them well for the future.

We’ve added Soleil Radio to the Portsmouth DAB multiplex. Based in the Channel Islands. Soleil Radio is a relaxing, more music, chilled out, easy listening radio station.

In other news, today we say goodbye to a long term friend, Countryline Radio (formerly known as Chris Country). Unfortunately Countryline Radio have decided to leave DAB in the Portsmouth area. We wish them all the best for the future.

We’ve recently had a station shuffle on our Portsmouth DAB+ multiplex.

Now available on DAB+ digital radio in the Portsmouth area for the first time is Nation 00s playing nothing but non stop music from the first decade of thus millennium.

Unofficial all-speech Portsmouth FC fan channel Pompey Sound has gone digital. Totally independent, no music, just chatter all day everyday about the Pride Of The South, Pompey!

The world-renowned iconic Belgian festival Tomorrowland have launched their Tomorrowland One World Radio station playing exclusive mixes, unique tracks, new releases and the most iconic live sets from 18 years of Tomorrowland.

We’ve said goodbye to Cosoro Radio, Like Pop and Nation Radio UK. Cosoro Radio and Like Pop continue online, while Nation Radio UK has gained wider coverage in the Solent area on DAB. To continue listening to Nation Radio UK, simply retune your radio.

On the evening of Monday 4th April 2022 we will be relocating our transmitter at Fort Widley. For the last six years we have been broadcasting from the rooftop of Fort Widley. From Monday we will move to the main transmission mast at Fort Widley. Although we do not anticipate a major change to our coverage area, we would be interested in any feedback from listeners as to whether coverage is better, worse or the same.

We also have a new telecoms link installed at the transmission site at Fort Widley. This will help improve the reliability of our transmissions too.

To facilitate all of the above, we will turn off the Fort Widley transmitter at 19:00 on Monday 4th April 2022 up until Midnight – although we hope to keep the outage to a minimum. Transmissions from our Leigh Park transmitter will continue to broadcast unaffected.

Please be advised that there will be a shut down of our Fort Widley transmitter some point after 19:00 this evening (21/10/21). The outage is expected to take no more than one hour.

Services from our Leigh Park transmitter will be unaffected.

There will be engineering work taking place today (07/10/21) resulting in all services being taken off air from our Fort Widley transmitter. We will do the work between 10:00 and 16:00. While we aim to keep the outage to a minimum, we are afraid it will last several hours. This is for transmitter repairs to take place. Our Leigh Park transmitter will remain on air.