YES - Matt Deegan, creative director, Folder Media
Digital One is an excellent way to reach nine million UK radios and it's encouraging to see that it is going to be more aggressive with its pricing.
The thing that will bring would-be digital radio stations to its platform, however, is its overall attitude. Its current offering is expensive.
It should be concentrating on finding other solutions to help service providers join its digital radio platform. Digital One becomes a more valuable asset as DAB becomes more successful.
Above cutting costs, Digital One should look at contra value that providers can bring by marketing DAB through service providers' other platforms, such as magazines, TV and direct mail.
This would bring new people to commercial radio and not just recycle existing analogue stations.
NO - Grant Goddard, independent radio analyst
Digital One's decision to offer spectrum to new entrants has arrived far too late in the day to reinvigorate the DAB platform.
During 2008, Digital One's controlling shareholder closed its digital stations theJazz, Capital Life and Core, and sold Planet Rock, all of which had broadcast nationally on Digital One.
Any content provider considering Digital One's new offer should enquire why these stations failed, and should ask Planet Rock's new owner about the challenge of making money out of a digital station with a peak half-hour audience of only 79,000 adults.
The problem is that most consumers owning DAB radios are not using them to listen to new, digital-only stations because, BBC excepted, there is so little innovative digital content to excite them. This is a stalemate that will persist as long as the DAB platform remains financially unviable.
YES - Douglas McArthur, consultant and founder, RAB
We know listeners like DAB digital radio and buy millions of sets. We know the Government wants radio to move out of analogue.
We know that commercial stations cannot run loss-making digital stations in the way the BBC can. We know that the City didn't buy DAB as a long-term investment.
What I don't know is what communications minister Stephen Carter is going to say about DAB.
It seems to me that there are a lot of "smaller stations" on local/regional digital that might be interested in becoming a national station if the price is right and there are government incentives to support what will, initially, be a loss-making investment in national broadcasting.
After all, Government wants Channel 4, so it looks at arranging help for it; Government wants ITV, so it reduces its obligations; government buys banks. So, how about a little support for digital radio?
NO - Amanda Barrett, radio engagement specialist, Universal McCann
The problem with DAB is not just high carriage costs, it's about the fact that radio companies cannot make DAB profitable.
DAB still does not offer consumers much more than their standard FM radios in terms of content and sound quality, and it has not exploited its interactive potential.
Internet radio, on the other hand, is an area increasing fast, offering good returns for stations.
About 14.5 million people listen to the radio via the internet. New wi-fi radios and mobile internet devices, such as the iPhone, have the capability to stream thousands of stations in real time, offer improved sound quality, plus a multitude of interactive capabilities such as listen again.
Unless DAB is radically improved, I cannot see new radio stations lining up to embrace it.