DirectBand is a North American wireless datacast network owned and operated by Microsoft. It uses FM radio broadcasts in over 100 cities to constantly transmit data to a variety of devices, including portable GPS devices, wristwatches and home weather stations.

DirectBand uses the 67.65 kHz subcarrier leased by Microsoft from commercial radio broadcasters. This subcarrier delivers about 12 kbit/s (net after ECC) of data per tower, for over 100 MB per day per city. Data includes traffic, sports, weather, stocks, news, movie times, calendar appointments, and local time.

DirectBand does not use the RDS (Radio Data System) subcarrier. RDS is a different system and has much lower data rate (~730 bit/s after ECC, including framing). Its much narrower subcarrier is primarily used for radio station information and traffic. DirectBand and RDS can co-exist on the same FM station.

Since many DirectBand uses are mobile, and there is no opportunity to request retransmission of a broadcast signal, DirectBand utilizes an advanced error-correction strategy that allows for reconstruction of messages even when sizable portions of the message are lost due to buildings, tunnels or other obstructions of the FM signal. Error correction is 1/2 rate interleaved trellis with time diversity, soft-decision decode. The DirectBand data rate is in excess of 12 kbit/s after ECC.