FCC chief wants smartphones’ hidden FM radios turned on | Hacker News Reader

FCC chief wants smartphones’ hidden FM radios turned on

theverge.com

148 pointssaycheese105 comments

Submitted title gives the impression that he's going to do something about it. Actual article title: "FCC chief wants smartphones’ hidden FM radios turned on, but won’t do anything about it"

This. From the article:

"“As a believer in free markets and the rule of law, I cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips,” Pai said. He believes the FCC doesn’t have the power to issue such a mandate and says it’s best for the market to sort things out."

Sometimes when the rights of sellers and the rights of buyers clash, it becomes obvious that the rights of buyers should be protected by the government through regulation since the market isn't fully free due to monopolistic or oligopolistic market forces. Even Mr. Pai can see that this is stupid, but is unwilling to require manufacturers to do the right thing. This is one of those cases where libertarianism loses its appeal.

What? According to the article, "44 percent of the 'top-selling smartphones' in the US had activated FM radios". If you want a mainstream smartphone that can listen to FM radio, that is totally a thing you can just buy.

No. In this case he's spot on. There's really no need for the government to interject in this specific matter.

What monopolistic market forces? There are dozens of phone manufacturers and you can buy an unlocked phone and use on any GSM carrier.

Libertarianism loses its appeal because cell phone manufacturers don't want to waste money and engineering time supporting FM radio, which almost no one listens to anyway?

There's plenty of competition among cell companies, and the market has spoken; people don't really care about FM radio on their cell phones.

>... which almost no one listens to anyway?

"Traditional AM/FM terrestrial radio still retains its undiminished appeal for listeners – 91% of Americans ages 12 and older had listened to this form of radio in the week before they were surveyed in 2015, according to Nielsen Media Research. This data is derived from diary-collected listening information from a sample of over 395,000 respondents over the period of one week, as a part of Nielsen’s RADAR study."

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/audio-fact-sheet/

You are quoting a mouthpiece for US radio broadcasters. That's a cherry picked measurement, it's clear while people still listen in cars, they listen less and less outside of their cars. Radio is losing listening hours every year and becoming less and less important, which is why smartphone makers have little incentive to support it.

The proof is in the revenues.

"AM/FM’s revenue from “spot” advertising (ads aired during radio broadcasts, its main revenue source) declined 3% in 2015, while revenue from digital and off-air advertising both posted gains – 5% and 11% respectively. This revenue pattern largely mirrored that of 2014, when spot dollars were also down 3% for the year"

I'm not quite sure that I follow your rebuttal. Are you claiming that Nielsen did not do a study of 395,000 listeners over the age of 12 using diaries? Also, could you help me understand why revenue declines for spot advertising has anything to do with the number of actual listeners to the radio on the FM band? Your original claim was that "almost no one listens to FM radio" but that's clearly not the case... failure to monetize the consumers have a particular media is not at all an indication of consumption of that media. 91% of Americans could be listening to public radio for all we know.

I listened to FM radio last week - once, for about 10 minutes.

15 years ago, I listened for an hour and a half a day. As a teenager, I'd listen throughout the day. Teenagers generally don't do that anymore - Spotify, Pandora, etc., have supplanted FM radio as the delivery channel of most music (and news).

The survey still records accurately that I listened in the last week, but I'm no longer a profitable listener. Advertising prices reflect that decline.

I'm interested to hear why people listen to terrestrial radio though (especially for people in the United States).

I stream BBC Radio 1 when I drive to work and I live in Bay Area, but I haven't found a terrestrial radio station that I would listen to.

Because I turn on my car, and without changing anything, the radio comes on. No batteries or data plans to worry about, and there's a decent interface that's integrated into my car.

I can get the same stations through IHeartRadio. I could get a phone dock, a bluetooth device to connect to the aux input (car doesn't have BT), an adapter for power (cigarette adapter), and all that. And I'd spend 20 seconds each car trip turning on BT, opening the streaming app and navigating to the station, fiddling with volume. I could stream stations from outside of my area, but I pick up worldwide news all day anyhow. My commute's for more local stuff.

I'm just not a fan of using my phone for streaming in general.

Also FM/AM reception feels like it's more robust than DAB/LTE/3g reception - often I can still listen to FM/AM in areas where other wireless tech black out.

Up until recently it was too expensive to stream anything on a HSPA/LTE connection in Australia. In Canada, even more so.

We have decent non-commercial options here on AM and FM.

I agree with you. It doesn't matter though.

I think we can all predict the future here pretty easily. The instant this went into affect if anyone ever tried to create a rule (assuming it's survived court challenges, etc.) Apple would simply demand from its suppliers that they give them chips that DO NOT have FM radios.

It's not like Apple is hiding GPS functionality from users will relying on it itself, it's just a little thing that happens to be tacked onto the silicon. If the government tries to force Apple to do something they don't want, they'll just choose to buy chips without it.

At that point you're where the Radio industry tried to be many years ago where instead of asking for the thing that's on the phone to be turned on, you're now trying to mandate features into the phone to protect your business model. That's a very very steep slope to get support for.

Consumers are free to vote with their wallets, this doesn't seem to be a big deal to many of them. I don't think there's a clear public interest in requiring it the way there was GPS functionality to help locate people calling 911 for emergencies.

Even if the groups got their way, there are so many ways for Apple and others to wiggle out of it that I don't see how this would ever work.

On a side note, in the US there's no actual requirement for cell phones to have GPS. They can use triangulation off of cell towers, so long as they can get the required accuracy.

Huh. I remember hearing that a lot of phones would cut back to 2G (this was a couple of years ago) when you were calling 911 so that they didn't have to use GPS to get the required accuracy which I guess was only required at 3G or 4G connections.

It is a matter of safety. Given a national crisis, the cellular networks may go down, but the radio will practically always work.

If something takes out the 215,000 cell towers in the us, I wonder if that something will affect the 27,000 FM Radio towers as well - some of which are co located on the same masts.

Granted, it's easier to broadcast FM and be received

> If something takes out the 215,000 cell towers in the us, I wonder if that something will affect the 27,000 FM Radio towers as well - some of which are co located on the same masts.

After Hurricane Sandy, all the cell towers in Lower Manhattan were out of service - between my roommate and me, were were unable to get any signal on Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint.

Fortunately he had a hand-powered radio (electricity was also out) and we listened to that to determine when it was safe to go out, when the cabs were running, etc.

Cell networks can go down for non-structural reasons. Radio has no network load.

> people don't really care about FM radio on their cell phones.

Thanks for all that data! I loved my last phone with a radio.

>"...He believes the FCC doesn’t have the power to issue such a mandate and says it’s best for the market to sort things out."

Good thing we're paying him to perform such an important job. ...Wait, what is supposed to be doing?

> FCC chief wants smartphones’ hidden FM radios turned on, but won’t do anything about it

That's a principled stand: 'I want to do something, but I do not have legitimate authority to make sit so.' It's actually amazingly principled for someone in Washington.

Political communication is not about transferring information or truth, but about manipulation. You and I aren't consumers of it or citizens, we're targets. Another way to think about it is the old poker advice: "If you look around and don't know who the sucker is, it's you."

Many like him (I don't know him in particular) want to appear to appeal to our principles in order to manipulate us into support or at least quiescence, so they use the words that accomplish that. Meanwhile they are enacting policies (and ideologies) they desire, including enriching big business and other wealthy constituents of his party. It's like watching a magician - don't watch where they're directing your attention, look at the other hand. Or, 'follow the money' - who benefits?

These messages are carefully crafted - literally; experts are hired to compose them, messaging is tested like marketing, and people are trained in what to say (talking points). For example, you may recall that in the debate about cutting estate taxes the GOP started calling them "death taxes" and taking about the cost to small farmers and businesses; all that messaging was composed, using the process I described, by a guy they hired in the 1990s - and sure enough, 10 years later people I know were repeating it like it was gospel.

but death taxes suck. government coming in during time of grief and taking people's money that likely was already taxed one or more times. cold, heartless, calculating, disrespectful. everything we hate about government.

Disagree. It's fine for the government to take half of anything I've saved beyond $5.45 million when I die. If this does serious additional psychic damage to the recipients of my estate, I've probably done a terrible job raising them and it might be better if they got nothing. Nobody needs that kind of money.

> money that likely was already taxed one or more times

That describes all money everywhere, to a great degree. Think of it this way: The money you have, unless you printed it, came from someone else. And unless that someone else printed it, the 'same' money came from somebody before them. Unless you print it, all money comes from someone and circulates endlessly.

A lot of macroeconomics is based around this circulation of money. Think of this: When I buy dinner at your restaurant, I'm out $25 from my microeconomic perspective. But from the _macro_economic perspective, from the perspective of the national economy, no money is lost at all - it merely shifts from my pocket to yours. (This ignores some other significant issues, of course.)

Almost all taxation occurs when the money changes hands. I don't see why massive estate transactions should be exempted.

> death taxes suck

Well all taxes suck, but so does my electricity bill and everything else I pay for. I have no problem paying my share of the national bills; I'd be ashamed to try to shift my share onto others.

> Almost all taxation occurs when the money changes hands. I don't see why massive estate transactions should be exempted.

Currently, yes. There's no reason why we couldn't have wealth taxes or land-value taxes rather than transaction taxes, of course.

It's also offensive that the estate tax is punitive: I believe that current tax is 40% on everything over a certain amount. That is, IMHO, insane: the State is declaring that it has a 40% stake in all of someone's financial success, despite having taxed every penny of that when it was earned in the first place.

Finally, you're missing the point: we tax money at transactions because it's at those transactions that value is created: I pay you $25 for dinner, and I get $25+x value from that meal, while you pay $25-y to create it, leaving the economy $x+y better. I think it's reasonable to attempt to capture some of the value of those transactions to fund the government whose security & stability make them possible (e.g. your restaurant need not hire guards, because we have police; I need not pay for a road from my house to your restaurant, because one has been provided, &c.). But there's no value created at death: it's just a transfer, and to tax it (particularly at punitive rates) just seems like grasping greed.

> I have no problem paying my share of the national bills; I'd be ashamed to try to shift my share onto others.

I really hate this tone from supporters of high taxation, for two reasons: first, at least this proponent of changing our tax system doesn't object to paying his share; second, I believe many tax supporters want to raise taxes on somebody else.

We tax money because we have services to pay for which are important enough that no individual or corporation alone should have exclusive control over, or more commonly, for "the common good". We as a voting people decide (via elected representatives) how we want to raise this money. We do it in a way that seems least painful for (hopefully) the largest number of people.

The exact definition of what's a good trade-off between services afforded and who to tax how much differs from one person to another, and one government to another. The common undercurrent, though, is that there is stuff to pay for, and that the decision lies with the people (via elected representatives) and not some arbitrary set of principles such as "because value is created".

We adopt laws based on such principles because they seem like a good enough solution that many can agree on. Many can also agree that taking money from someone who's dead is doing less harm than taking more money from someone who's still alive or cutting services (which also amounts to taking from people who are still alive). Many also agree that the deceased should have some say, pre-mortem, in how their legacy gets allocated.

That's why you have the right to bestow money upon your chosen heirs at all, rather than it all going to the state, or the king, or the first rando who happens to loot your home. Not because we follow unchangable principles, but because enough of us agree that it's the right thing to do. It's a subtle distinction.

A constitution is the lowest common denominator that a large enough majority of people can agree on. The US Constitution does not go into detail about what to tax and why. If there is a subsequent decision by the Supreme Court that acts as authoritative source for your argument, I'm happy to see it. Otherwise, your interpretation is just that, an opinion that people may agree with or disagree.

If, collectively, the people decide that the dead person's untaxed non-charitable donation rights are more important than the living's tax rates and/or services, I'm sure we can find a way to reduce or eliminate estate taxes.

This is the one and only issue where I agree with Ajit Pai (smartphone makers should not restrict access to the FM radio that is built in to the Bluetooth chips on many devices).

However, I believe his reason for not doing anything about it has less to do with his principles about the free market and more to do with being in bed with the big media companies who would love nothing more than to remove any free alternative to paid streaming media services. Pai has had no qualms wielding executive power in gutting net neutrality to pave the road for tiered Internet schemes and zero-rating. He does it under the guise of being some sort of free market evangelist, but it's really all about the money he gets from lobbyists[1].

He's going to retire from government work a filthy rich man, and he's doing so by eroding consumer digital freedoms.

[1] http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2016...

> Pai has had no qualms wielding executive power in gutting net neutrality to pave the road for tiered Internet schemes and zero-rating

He's not "using executive power" to gut anything. He's choosing not to exercise the executive's authority to actively enforce rules that would be necessary ensure net neutrality.

You and I may not like it, but it's not ideologically inconsistent like you make it out to be.

Yes, he is:

> "I’m optimistic that last month’s election will prove to be an inflection point—and that during the Trump Administration, we will shift from playing defense at the FCC to going on offense," Pai said in a speech yesterday before the Free State Foundation in Washington, DC, said. The commission "need[s] to remove outdated and unnecessary regulations... We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation," he also said.[1]

He is planning to remove net neutrality regulation, not just decline to enforce it.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/fccs-...

Again, you and I both disagree with his assertion that enforcing net neutrality is not within his authority. But it's not inconsistent for him to make that assertion and also to remove net neutrality regulations that his own agency previously issued, replacing them instead with a different set that requires less power to enforce.

When you're talking about the executive branch, "removing regulation" means issuing guidelines (and executing them). They have the authority to do this one way or the other, and he is choosing to issue rules that involve a smaller display of executive authority when enforced.

Except in a very abstract linguistic sense, it makes no sense to say that "removing regulations" is a more "active" use of authority than actually actively enforcing regulations.

Right. He's simply expressing his own opinion without trying to force the law around it.

This isn't really any different from a police sergeant disagreeing publicly with something but saying he still going to enforce the existing laws around it or he doesn't think would be legal to make a law to cover it. For example, flag burning. Lots of people think it should be illegal, lots of people know that that would be unconstitutional.

A lot of these sorts of problems would go away if companies were not allowed to tie products they have a complete or partial monopoly on (i.e. last mile wireless) to things that they don't have a monopoly on (handsets). Then if a company wanted to sell a phone on a time payment plan with a broken FM radio, then then no one could complain if they did so. The market would soon "sort things out".

Cellular carriers haven't had a stranglehold on phone manufacturers since the iPhone came out. I don't think carriers are demanding features from Apple.

As far as Android, you can buy plenty of decent Android phones unlocked and just choose your carrier - as long as you don't choose one of the CDMA carriers. Not being able to use Sprint is no big loss. That just leaves Verizon.

Even with Verizon if you have a phone which supports their LTE bands, you can use them on Verizon. I used my iPhone 6 and iPhone SE from AT&T on Verizon.

That's not true of all phones though. Most phones don't support CDMA and GSM.

Both SE models support CDMA and GSM but different bands. But only some iPhone 6 models support CDMA.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/diff...

I thought it was the other way around. VZW's CDMA phones support GSM so that their customers can use them while traveling internationally, but you're unlikely to find a GSM phone that has CDMA just in case you want to switch to VZW.

There are plenty of cheaper CDMA phones that don't support GSM. Most of the higher end phones support both.

And then there is another scenario like I believe some of the Google Nexus tablets only support LTE on Verizon and won't work at all if there is no 4G on a CDMA network. It will work on 3G/3.5G GSM networks.

Google has more monopoly power in search than any cellular provider has in last mile wireless access. Are you opposed to Google Maps results showing up in search listings?

These chips are also only useful with wired headphones, since they use them as the FM antenna. As Bluetooth (and proprietary) wireless headphones increase in popularity, the usefulness of the features decrease. It also adds to confusion as to why you only get static in some cases, or a message about wired headphones being required.

> wireless headphones increase in popularity

Do they?

> It also adds to confusion as to why you only get static in some cases, or a message about wired headphones being required.

Poor humans, constantly being confused. Life must be difficult.

My LG Incite from 2008 running Windows Mobile 6.1 had an FM Radio, as did my HTC HD2 from around the same time. There were multiple Sandisk Sansa series MP3 players that came with FM built-in as well.

I remember the iPod did not offer FM without a dongle, probably because they didn't want radio to compete with the iTunes Store. It's probably not that different now. Lots of Android phones today (carrier subsidized or otherwise), now come with Spotify, Tidal or Google Play Music pre-installed.

It worries me that a regulatory body makes a public safety case for FM radio and won't even attempt to ask manufacturers to simply activate what is already there, in deference to "the free market". So now pushing for regulation is disrespecting "the rule of law"?

Developments like this make me wish that "open-source" device+OS projects like Mokophone and Firefox OS failed to gain traction.

The iPod Nano 5th edition required that the user plug in head phones to listen to FM radio, this was required because there was no internal antenna, nor would one work very well with the case being made out of metal.

Not a dongle...

I believe he's right Apple sold an actual radio tuner for earlier models before the 5th gen nano.

Ah, you are correct:

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Radio-Remote-iPod-White/dp/B000...

Interesting, never knew about this.

"So now pushing for regulation is disrespecting "the rule of law"?"

Yes, where an agency takes action outside the scope of its lawful powers.

FCC will not step in to require FM chips be accessible on smartphones that have them; currently only 44% of the top selling smartphones enable their FM chips, here's a list of the ones that do: http://nextradioapp.com/supported-devices/

No, that's a list of phones that support the nextradio app. I did not buy my Sony Z3 and Z3 Compact from my carrier (T-Mobile). They work fine -- T-Mobile once offered a branded Z3 -- as does the FM radio. Neither phone will support the nextradio app. Although I can install the app, it says I need to contact my carrier. nextradio support says the same thing. I don't know if nextradio supports unbranded phones on their list; but, they do not support all phones with working FM radio.

As a public policy, it should be encouraged as many people can't afford data plans. Basically their smartphone is their computer, and they go from hotspot to hotspot for data. I also agree with the public safety aspect as well, but either case requires consumer awareness and interest.

My Sony Xperia tablet has an FM tuner, but I had no idea it was there until I noticed the app. It works well with a wired headset. It was handy in Cuba (though everything was in Spanish) and a few other places where Internet wasn't available/practical to use. I don't know that it would affect my next purchase, but it does affect my perception of how user-hostile the manufacturer is.

It should be "encouraged"? What does this mean? There are phones that support FM radio, if it's important to you get one. Don't foist the costs of this "feature" on those who don't want it.

It's pretty clear Apple doesn't support radio because it's a feature almost no one wants, and won't necessarily work as well as customers want. You need an antenna, which on most phones uses the headphones, but it's unclear if lightning phones can provide the same support. Spending money and time trying to resolve any issues would just be a waste.

As someone who was using an old walkman to listen to radio. Now I stream it, even though I'm within range of the fm station.

Mainly its convince as the rechargeable aa batteries for my am/fm cassette found another home. It seems so wasteful though, on the other hand I feel like I'm being counted when I stream.

counted, or tracked and monitored?

I never listen to FM, but I'm sure a bunch of folks are busy collecting my habits and listening preferences are a valuable input to a complete "dossier".

I know people that have never even used an AM/FM radio. Like, if you say a radio station, they don't know what the numbers mean. I don't see a lot of people using this feature because they don't know what it is.

presumably those people have never driven a car.

As I've said before, every cubic millimeter of volume in a modern smartphone is expensive... it is precious.

Even if that functionality is available on one of the multiprotocol wireless chips, adding even a tiny amount of support circuitry to enable may not be a wise move from a product design point of view.

In the USA, an FM receiver isn't going to sell phones. VR, better cameras, longer battery life, etc. sell phones.

The FM receiver is very nearly always built into every phone processor. And support circuitry like that is trivial.

Plus, FM receivers are much less power consuming than radio over data.

My next phone will have an FM receiver.

The FM receiver is not "built into every phone processor". It is sometimes built into a separate radio chip. One such chip is the Broadcom BCM94343WWCD1: http://www.mouser.com/new/broadcom/broadcom-bcm94343wwcd1-mo...

Exactly, and it's not like forcing that function to be enabled in the chipset is going to magically install an antenna/amp into a device that doesn't have it.

What? The antenna has been the headphones for ages.

And last I checked, removing software that blocks the radio function would not add a cubic nanometer to the total volume of the chipset.

Apple has already done away with the headphone jack, and re-enabling use of the headphones would probably mean having to add a receiver to the tiny circuitry in the plug that houses the DAC. That sounds like a lot of work for a niche feature, and it's not going to help users of wireless headphones either.

...until wireless headphones started becoming common.

Then I'd expect the FM reception functionality to be built into the headphones, with the phone acting as a remote to switch stations etc.

Not that I'm for eliminating the 3.5mm jack: this is just one among other reasons I'd refuse to get an iPhone even for free.

Or using the phone's internal speakers.

Every cubic millimeter is precious... because we make our phones so thin that you end up buying a protective case to add some heft since it's so thin it wants to slip out of your fingers. Then you also buy a portable battery to top off when that super thin battery runs dry in the early evening.

Would it be really so bad if someone made a smartphone that was ~2x as thick as an iPhone, with added battery life and usability?

Unfortunately, it's in these companies best interest to push a new phone every year, regardless of if the new features justify the added cost... or are even features.

but FM radio consumes less power.

All you need to make FM radio to work is to just connect ground of headphones to a pin, but it is connected to pin anyway, so no extra hardware is required.

Norway is first country to turn off FM radio and go digital-only https://www.newscientist.com/article/2117569-norway-is-first...

If we did this in the US it would be terrible for me. I still listen to the radio when I drive because I don't have unlimited data on my phone for streaming. My car is 16 years old so the radio doesn't support digital and it definitely isn't worth upgrading. So I'd often be driving in silence which, while not the end of the world, would suck.

My wife's car does have a digital radio, but on long trips around California there are often times when I can only get analog radio because they digital infrastructure just isn't there.

Perhaps a forced change would make them upgrade, but I suspect there would be a lot more dead zones (because at least at the current power levels, the analog versions of the stations reach much further).

At least the oldest cars had a cassette player, so you could use a jack cassette adapter[1] and listen to music on your phone/mp3 player. The more recent one would have mp3 CD players so you could burn discs with hundred of hours of music. But the worst are the car in-between, with no Cassette player, but only a CD player, where you could burn at most ~20 tracks on those 650MB CD-R.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Insten-Cassette-Adapter-Compatible-Pl...

They used to make a device that is essentially a tiny AM transmitter. You'd plug it into your MP3 player's audio jack, and tune your car's radio to a particular frequency.

I'm not sure if this is still a thing, though. It also doesn't totally solve the problem (e.g. can't possibly listen to anything live like sports or news), but it does help.

It was FM and I have one so that I can listen to podcasts when I drive in foreign countries.

But it sure is a pain in the ass. :)

FM transmitter, not AM, but yes they still make them.

Are you aware that most music apps like Spotify allow you to pre-load music? You can download thousands of tunes in an hour or so, from any wifi hotspot. No advertisements either. Then you play it back in your car. Weeks of music, if you want.

FM radio is usually heavily handicapped by advertisements on-air. THAT is one major reason that is driving "Internet-enabled" people away. And they never come back.

I enjoy the curation of the music directors and the witty banter in the morning (despite the fact that a lot of it is from yesterday's Reddit).

I can usually get six good stations in the Bay Area so commercials aren't a problem. I just go to the next station.

Honestly, I enjoy the radio personalities and their choice of music. I have playlists I can listen to on my phone, but I hear most new music through the radio. The ads aren't that bad, I flip channels sometimes because of ads, but that's not a big deal.

I may be wrong here, but wouldn't reception be pretty poor using an antenna designed for >10x the frequency of FM radio? There's a reason why most FM radios have protruding antennas - the wavelength is ~3 meters.

Normally they use the headphone cable as an antenna (which leads to contortions if you want to listen using bluetooth, since with most phones the software assumes "oh, headphones plugged in, audio to headphones it is")

Windows Phone did a good job with this; the music app let you choose to override the default and play through the output device of your choice.

My first Android smartphone had an FM radio, and it used the headphone cable as an antenna. You had to have headphones plugged in or you got nothing but static.

The reception is crap, but the S/N ratio is still good because the electronics add minimal noise, so most of the noise is atmospheric interference which is also reduced.

I think I've figured out what's really going on here.

I had a look at http://nextradioapp.com and found that even the Galaxy S7 Edge has an FM radio. Curious if there was some kind of secret way to kickstart it regardless of the vendors' interests, I did a quick Google and found https://community.verizonwireless.com/thread/908251, and learned something very very interesting. (I still don't know if you can bypass it, but I'd now be surprised if you could.)

Most of the below is taken from the above link, which is recommended reading.

It appears that to enable the FM radio, you must pay licensing fees (?) of some kind, and you must also do FCC radiation testing. If you disable the FM receiver chip (presumably in a way end-users cannot bypass :( ), you get to skip those fees.

It also seems that if the manufacturer turns the radio off, it's still possible for the carrier to turn it back on if they foot the bills for the licensing fees and certification.

So the carriers' position isn't too great: they're getting handsets with neutered FM receivers from manufacturers looking to "optimize" their OEM prices, which the carriers would have to throw a bunch of money at re-enabling... only to give consumers less reason to continuously use data. This totally explains why I only just learned the S7 Edge has an FM receiver in it (I'm in Australia btw).

Regarding the OP article, this whole situation appears to just be a money-grabbing attempt by the FCC. The gracious-sounding lines in the OP article about him saying that he doesn't believe he should force everyone is just fluff. This is just a careful financial drive - the FCC can't force everyone to enable the radio because it would risk the FCC itself getting stomped on itself by antitrust laws/conflict of interest rulings.

That being said, nextradio does list a few phones with enabled radios on a number of carriers, so I'm guessing the fees are not too high, and I'm guessing this is simply a benign case of, say, fewer radios being sold worldwide because everyone's moved to their phone now, and the FCC is trying to continue receiving their FM revenue while the FM bandwidth is still operative - for example Norway just killed FM countrywide (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13333570).

I'm very very curious who is footing the bill for the 80% of phones being sold in Mexico (as per the OP article).

The FCC-mandated radiation testing for FM receivers is absolutely trivial compared to all the other emissions tests required by them for electronics devices, especially intentional radiators such as mobile phones. They're at the lowest tier of assessment and authorization, which doesn't even require the use of an accredited testing laboratory or filing any kind of application or registration: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=df5370d2e0e33e10c9b... Any company capable of making a mobile phone should have the equipment to do this in-house.

Now, it's entirely possible that the chipset manufacturers are charging licensing fees to enable FM radio, but as far as I can tell companies don't have to pay a single cent to the FCC for this.

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I didn't think testing for radio compliance would be too tricky.

The license agreement bits do have me a bit perplexed. I'm not sure how that works out. I was admittedly rolling with conjecture and surmising a bit in my other comment, although it did sound plausible.

To be fair, there are bodies in charge of competiton and consumer protection that should be fixing the moronic us cellphone market. The FCC is just about the broadcast frequencies themselves.

In Russia, FM stations are as bad as TV. Mostly "Russian chanson" music — songs about jail life and "thieves romanticism", lowest grade pop music and propaganda news. Is there decent stations in US?

But it would be super cool if such receivers had frequency range larger than for broadcast stations and streamed raw i/q samples.

For road trips, we always just play mp3's off of our phone. (The car doesn't have aux in, so we actually use a FM transmitter dongle for the phone.)

The stations in the US seem to have a _lot_ of advertisements, and as others have noted, are mostly owned by clear channel and play the same ten songs over and over. (Stations generally have a genre of music they play, so they'll repeat the same ten songs of that genre.)

But I agree that software defined radio would be an interesting function to have on a phone.

FM music is pretty much the same everywhere in the US because Clear Channel owns (almost) everything

on the west coast there are tons of hispanic stations, the occasional bollywood station, classical, talk (both liberal and conservative), public radio, country, christian

Usually the latest hits are on. Local universities usually also play whatever they want which ends up good.

I had a 1-hr each way car commute for about 6 months, and gave up on FM really quickly. Too much repetition, even on the Bollywood channel. I got Sirius XM, and loved it, except for the (somewhat) shady billing practices.

This is the FCC chief who uses the free market competition argument in favor of reversing net neutrality.

I'd love if my iPhone had an FM/AM radio. I think it's silly that they don't put one in there yet, and I don't know of a good reason.

The nano's have them. I'd be fine with the headphones being an antenna. Data caps, man. I need my tunes at work!

I would love to see manufacturers enable this feature instead of artificially crippling the software/hardware found in the phones.

Tuning into local tourist information broadcast is something that you cannot completely substitute with a data connection.

My Nokia Lumia 920 had an fm radio.... I loved that feature of it. I used to listen to local radio/sports radio stations on the way home from work without using my data (public transit, no wifi).

All Windows Phones were required to have a functioning FM tuner. Microsoft had a strict list of hardware requirements.

Can phones access the radio audio in software? Combine it with a low power FM transmitter for data and you might be able to make something interesting for short distance data broadcasts.

Yep, because we all need more unskippable ads, the same 10 songs on infinite repeat and shock-jocks screaming about whatever.

If radio actually had some variation from that pattern, I'd support this. Instead, I'd suggest just dropping the radio tuner chip and using the space for something else that's actually useful.

The only reason they're in there in the first place is because the radio industry pitched a hissyfit and Congress decided some protectionism was in order.

There's a title mismatch between submission and original post, with the original title providing far more context. cc dang

Virtually all major FM radio stations can be found on tunein.com, which is how Sonos speakers support local radio stations.

Why? There's no good reason for carriers or phone makers to do it. I haven't been anywhere where the radio was playing in a long time. I'd rather see the frequencies returned to the general population for fun.

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