Does Lack of FM Support On Phones Increase Your Chances of Dying In a Disaster?

theodp writes "You may not know it," reports NPR's Emma Bowman, "but most of today's smartphones have FM radios inside of them. But the FM chip is not activated on two-thirds of devices. That's because mobile makers have the FM capability switched off. The National Association of Broadcasters has been asking mobile makers to change this. But the mobile industry, which profits from selling data to smartphone users, says that with the consumer's move toward mobile streaming apps, the demand for radio simply isn't there." But FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate says radio-enabled smartphones could sure come in handy during times of emergency. So, is it irresponsible not to activate the FM chips? And should it's-the-app-way-or-the-highway Apple follow Microsoft's lead and make no-static-at-all FM available on iPhones?

Comments

Re:Lets say yes so they put an FM radio on my phon

[Somebody Is Using My]

While I don't think the lack is a safety risk - and I do think the headline is just the usual sort of attention-whoring we expect from the media these days - having an FM radio is very useful if there is a regional emergency. And since most people are usually carrying a phone anyway, locking out that ability does them a disservice.

Personal anecdote time: back in the big blackout of 2003 that shutdown the Northeastern US, nobody's phones were working because the networks were jammed by millions of people suddenly calling each other, everyone trying to figure out what was going on. Nobody knew anything except that the lights were off and there was an increasingly nervous tension; as this was only a couple years after 9/11, the word "terrorists" was on everybody's lips. I happened to have an MP3 player with FM functionality on me, and that made me very popular, because I could relay news to everyone around me. The temper changed from twitchy nervousness to reassured cooperation, from a fearful me-first attitude to one where informed people worked together to get through the disaster.

I don't think having that radio made me any safer, but it made me - and those around me - happier because we were not cut off from the rest of the world. I still carry that little MP3 player with me, solely for its radio functions even though my phone is one of the rare devices that does have FM functionality (the phone needs a charge every day, but the mp3 player, which is only the size of a thumb-drive, runs seemingly forever on an easily-replaced AA battery).

Re:and yet Norway

[Anne Thwacks]

The UK was going to switch off analog FM too, but then they discovered that

1) Most FM listeners are in cars

2) hardly cars have DAB radios

3) DAB radios hardly ever work in cars

4) If they switched off FM, the car drivers would NOT by DAB replacements.

The current plan is to leave FM radio switch of "till after the next election".

I have listened to FM on my phone twice in two years. I listen in the car all the time. If FM is turned off, I would probably listen to the pirate stations on FM. I surely won't by a DAB radio. My mum has three DAB radios. It is mostly a matter of life style.

As other posters have said "Follow the money".

Re:Obvious

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I've gone through enough hurricanes to watch even land-lined phones becoming a luxury.

Well, it seem to me, that living in a hurricane zone increases your chances of dying in a disaster.

So, if you are worried about lack of FM support on phones . . . just move somewhere else.

Jokes aside, most of us live in areas that are not prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or Godzilla. If you do choose to live in such places, it is important to be prepared, and have an emergency kit. In which you can just pack in a good ole' FM battery.

Re:What?

[Culture20]

I'm sorry, is it just me? What kind of information are you going to put out over FM to cell-phones, in an emergency, that will be life-saving?

It's not just you, but I'm guessing you've never been in a tornado/hurricane shelter without power huddled around a battery powered radio listening to storm updates. Sometimes the all-clear takes more than a couple hours than what the original predictions were. New funnel clouds crop up from nowhere, or reminders that a hurricane's eye can be very large and the storm isn't over. Flash floods, mud slides, forest fires, etc. If cell phones all has their FM chips enabled, you'd have almost one battery powered radio for every person in the shelter. Some could be turned off or their batteries could be swapped.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

>FM would mean being able to "broadcast" information to a lot of people at once, and discourage them from clogging up the network.

GSM had this feature many years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast

"Cell Broadcast is not as affected by traffic load; therefore, it may be usable during a disaster when load spikes (mass call events) tend to crash networks, as the 7 July 2005 London bombings showed. Another example was during the Tsunami catastrophe in Asia. Dialog GSM, an operator in Sri Lanka was able to provide ongoing emergency information to its subscribers, to warn of incoming waves, to give news updates, to direct people to supply and distribution centres, and even to arrange donation collections using Celltick's Cell Broadcast Center, based on Cell Broadcast Technology."

But even though it is many many years old, it is still in an infant stage in actual implementation on handsets and MNOs, e.g. local MNOs implemented CB over 3g networks in 2013, still nog 4g support for it.

Re:Makers or Service providers?

[sir-gold]

How do you explain phones that have identical international and US versions, and only the US version has the FM disabled?

The (international) HTC Desire Z had an FM radio, and came with an FM tuner app to access it. (using the headphones as the antenna)
The identical US version, the T-Mobile G2, also had an FM radio but it was disabled in software. (to fix it, you just had to install the stock FM tuner app)

I can only assume that T-mobile demanded that the FM radio be disabled, in order to get people to use up all their data listening to streaming music.

Re:Obvious

[niftymitch]

Because the article is very misleading.

Smartphones MAY have a chip in them that is capable of receiving FM transmissions [probably as part of the Qualcomm/whomever chip for processing cell phone signals].

But not a matter of 'just turn it on' and everything magically works.

You need an antennae/other external hardware that receives those signals properly. I'm not an antennae engineer,........

Since I have some phones that have the FM radio enabled all that is needed is headphones.
The antenna is the wires of the headphones.

That is not to say that the pin for the antenna is connected to the headphone connector.
It is also not clear what the regulations domestic and international are for testing the
FM radio for unwanted interference and matching the national band allocations.

But the original question is interesting. Local radio is invaluable in a disaster. The power budget
and infrastructure (transmitter towers) for FM radio are much more available. The service area of
a single FM radio tower could cover hundreds if not thousands of cell towers. Cell towers also depend
on digital backbone and data connections (routers) that also need uninterruptible power.

Local emergency management need only contact the radio station and the radio station only needs
a single generator. Radio is part of the emergency broadcasting system and disconnecting the FM radio
is disconnecting the EBS.

Having said this I recall waiting on the local FM radio station to announce school closure on one
especially nasty blizzards winter morning. There was no announcement... the school system could
not connect to the station by phone and the roads were so deep in snow that direct contact was
impossible.

Legislatures in earthquake, tornado, blizzard, hurricane disaster risk areas (the entire US) should
be paying attention to this. Because of the EBS link your representatives should be demanding internal
communications that fail to enable this important service. Disconnection and de facto dismantling
of the EBS in favor of pay for service revenue should be blocked.

Then there is: "As Radio.no notes, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) will provide Norwegian listeners more diverse radio channel content than ever before. Indeed, DAB already hosts 22 national channels in Norway, as opposed to FM radio’s five, and a TNS Gallup survey shows that 56% of Norwegian listeners use digital radio every day. While Norway is the first country in the world to set a date for an FM switch-off, other countries in Europe and Southeast Asia are also in the process of transitioning to DAB." (gizmodo-dot-com)

Thus I also want DAB support in future phones...