Internet Radio is a media outlet that transmits sound broadcasts and music over the World Wide Web (WAN) to any location in the world where Internet access is available, or over a Local Area Network (LAN) to any computer connected to that network. The Internet uses both wired and wireless data transmission technologies, including satellite and cellular networks. Wired, terrestrial data lines are WAN/LAN networks that use Ethernet technology: VPN and regular phone line: DSL (ADSL), Dial Up. Satellite Internet uses DVB technology, an advantage: the choice of any satellite provider, such as SkyDSL. Today, wireless data transfer technologies like Wi-Fi and the new WiMax data transfer protocol are spreading, followed by the networks of cellular companies with GPRS and EDGE/3G data transfer protocols. That is, the faster wireless Internet networks that transmit data over long distances are WiMax and EDGE/3G, which can serve as an excellent platform for transmitting the digital signal of all the Internet radio stations of the world with a maximum guarantee of quality of sound transmission from source to consumer, absolutely without any noise interference on the way. In principle, the new wireless networks are also called radio networks (cell phones are also ordinary radio receivers), but their difference is that they transmit digital, not analog information.
So, the word Internet-Radio came from the two words Internet (which we have now dealt with) and Radio, to which we summarized the conversation about the Internet.
Radio (lat. radio – to radiate, emit rays, radius – beam) – the technology of wireless transmission of information by means of electromagnetic waves of the radio range.
That is, we can conclude: initially separate technologies of digital data transmission Internet and analog radio signal come to their unification. All this generates new forms of transmission of information and multimedia content: music, radio and TV broadcasts via the Internet.
In the future, Internet radio is expected to supplant the current popularity of frequency wave radio and simple wired radio in its bulk. Internet radio may become very popular over time.
Already today we can see that the line between the division between analog and digital radio broadcasting is blurring. Almost all popular FM radio stations have their broadcasting on the Internet and the most interesting thing: the original projects, as internet radio stations, try to reach the FM-band, and some of them successfully do it. Moreover, with the transition to digital broadcasting in the FM-band, this process will actively develop in the future: internet radio stations will be able to buy licenses for broadcasting in the FM-band.