A world of information, music and entertainment programming is available to you in over 150 languages from international shortwave broadcasters around the world.

The High Frequency Co-ordination Conference (HFCC) has developed a database of shortwave schedules. With just a few clicks, you can find out what international stations are broadcasting to your region.

Visit the HFCC page and try out the database yourself!

Why the database?

Due to many factors, including seasonal changes and other variations in shortwave propagation, shortwave station schedules can change quite frequently. This is why the "HFCC - International Broadcast Delivery" association developed this database which is recognized as one of the most up-to-date public, global broadcast schedules in the world.

About 85 percent of all global shortwave broadcasting is represented in this database. The remaining 15 percent comprises of smaller stations in Africa and Latin America, as well as stations in the tropical broadcasting zone that employ shortwave transmissions for local listeners and are not interested in international co-ordination.

While most of these stations are owned and operated thanks to national governments or public service broadcasters, there are also privately owned and commercial stations represented in the database.

International frequency conferences:
Managing the airwaves around the world

Two international conferences are held each year in order to resolve or minimize mutual interference among shortwave transmissions. The conferences are organised in keeping with International Radio Regulations prior to the start-dates of seasonal broadcasting schedules that coincide with time changes in summer and winter. There are two global seasonal schedules that correspond to the summer and winter periods in the northern hemisphere.

These face-to-face conferences help to resolve thousands of frequency collisions that are detected in schedules. Unfortunately some parts of the shortwave spectrum are so overloaded that a complete solution for interference problems is not possible. This is why co-ordination is ongoing between conferences. The HFCC has developed an automatic web-based system to process and identify collisions in the global frequency that is available to all co-ordinators. The results of schedule changes and new frequency submissions can be viewed in the public broadcast schedule in real time.