A task team has been established under the auspices of the NAB Technical Committee to investigate the Radio Data System (RDS) standards for FM transmission in South Africa. A further brief would be to look at the utilisation and regulatory aspects of the RDS Spectrum

Although RDS has been in South Africa since 1991 it has come to the NAB`s attention that the general public are not aware of the advantages of an RDS receiver. Presently the two major advantages of an RDS receiver are the Programme Service (PS) Name Display and the ability to automatically switch to the most powerful signal. This function is called the Alternate frequency (AF). As many radio stations broadcast on multiple frequencies in different geographical regions, the RDS car radio automatically retunes to the frequency with the greatest signal strength. Hereby giving the listener uninterrupted service of their selected radio station. Many other functions like for instance, traffic announcements are possible on RDS. These will be investigated thoroughly by the task team to ensure that they are implemented in an orderly fashion without causing any interference to any other radio station. This will aid appropriate regulation by ICASA in the use of RDS by all broadcasters in South Africa.