Campaign Demands Telecoms Unlock the FM Radio Found in Many Smartphones (www.cbc.ca)

An anonymous reader cites an article on CBC: Your smartphone may include an FM radio chip but, chances are, it doesn't work. Now, an online campaign has launched in Canada, putting pressure on telecoms and manufacturers to turn on the radio hidden in many cellphones. Titled, "free radio on my phone," the campaign says that most Android smartphones have a built-in FM receiver which doesn't require data or Wi-Fi to operate. The U.S. arm of the campaign believes iPhones also have a built-in radio chip but that it can't be activated. Apple wouldn't confirm this detail. The radio chip in many Android phones also lies dormant. But the campaign says it can easily be activated -- if telecom providers ask the manufacturers to do it. In Canada, however, most of the telecoms haven't made the move to get the radio turned on. They'd prefer that you stream your audio, depleting your phone's costly data plan, claims campaign organizer, Barry Rooke.

Comments

FM radio's last gasp?

[Registered Coward v2]

I wonder how much of this is actual consumer demand for listening to ads and the same songs every hour to avoid data overages vs. FM radio's last desperate gasp to remain relevant now that streaming is offering an alternative?

Re:FM radio's last gasp?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree - and there are tested historical facts to show my point.
At 9/11, the cell towers couldn't handle the load and basically cell
phones became useless as communication devices. And with no
data, no "FM" app would work either.

Now, an analogue FM radio won't allow you to phone home, but
with an emergency like that, you'd at least be able to get some
sort of news, maybe helpful information about the event. And it's
not like the chips in the phone are defective FM receivers, they
are intentionally disabled by iApple (and other like-manufacturers)
to force you to use an app to gain that functionality. Sadly, users
believe that the app is the FM receiver and they're not corrected
by the salesman.

I'd like to see this as an FCC mandate (that cell phones are required to
have a non-app working FM receiver) since it really is a public safety issue.
That's just common sense, IMHO.

CAP === 'invented'

Re:FM radio's last gasp?

[fyngyrz]

So far, though, those $20 dongles require quite a lot of additional CPU power to do WFM demodulation, which requires a minimum of 180 Khz bandwidth (in the US, WFM is allocated 200 KHz slots, within which 75% modulation is the legal maximum, which, using Carson's rule, results in about 180 KHz of bandwidth use.) They require even more to to analog television, which are (were) allocated six MHz per channel.

As the author of SdrDx I have reason to know. :)

I am sure, however, that the currently large CPU requirements could be gotten around with some additional specialized hardware.

However, there are obvious financial reasons why a carrier would prefer you use bandwidth to receive information. So I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re:FM radio's last gasp?

[rockmuelle]

One person's trash is another's feast. Most of the music on the radio is actually quite good, if you're a fan of music and not just a fan of one particular genre. Pop music, for all its commercial faults, is popular for a reason. People like it.

Sure, classical and folk are good, too. So is jazz, rock, EDM, noise (yeah, it's a genre), and just about every other style people have come up with.

I challenge you to listen to some EDM and compare it to your favorite classical pieces. While we have had 300+ years to study classical music to death, the overall structure of the music is pretty much the same as EDM: invent a theme/hook, make some variations on it, connect the variations together for dramatic effect, embellish it all using the underlying implied chordal structure by overusing arpeggios ;).

Folk and Pop basically have the same relationship. Both tend to have rigid rules around song structure (ABAB,ABCAB, etc), use simple chord changes (almost always some mix of I, IV, V in both genres), and have lyrics that resonate with the listener base. Interestingly, they're also controlled with an iron fist by the powers in the genres - just try developing a new folk song without approval of the keepers of the Great American Songbook. ;) (I play in a country/folk band, the powers-that-be are almost as annoying as those from the jazz world, where I've also spent a lot of time)

The meta point being: Across genres, music is more similar the different. I encourage you to go on a listening bender across your local FM stations and seed a few Pandora stations with random things.

Safety

[captaindomon]

I do some safety consulting for disasters etc. This would be very helpful for disasters. You could even have an app that just tunes into the local emergency FM frequency. It's way easier to broadcast emergency instructions over FM to three million people in a metro area, than to support three million active streams over a data network, especially in an emergency.

It's not just software

[larwe]

Sure, many integrated WiFi/BT chipsets also include an FM receiver. But turning it on, in a phone that wasn't shipped with it turned on, is not just a software matter. With the LO powered up, you'll need to repeat conducted and radiated emissions tests. And if the phone wasn't intended to be shipped with the radio enabled, the necessary passives to connect it to the earphone jack as an antenna likely won't be on the PCB. And in the case of Apple, since they absolutely never intended to use the FM capability, I'd be amazed if the relevant pads from the WiFi package are even led out to traces.