
Campaign demands telecoms unlock the FM radio found in many smartphones - jonbaer
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/fm-radio-cellphone-telecoms-1.3577447
======
piyushpr134
It was jaw dropping for me to see how high handed American telocs are, when I
first experienced it. I took a friend's phone and tried to make a wifi
hotspot. I was shell shocked as AT&T popup announced that I cannot do that!

Try doing this in India and no consumer would touch your phone. Contracts are
not allowed in India. I am mildly proud that third world country telcos are
much more open compared to western ones

~~~
6t6t6t6
In Japan (except with some minor providers), your contract is linked to a
concrete terminal. If you break your terminal, you must buy a new one from the
company that is providing you the service.

Also, if you want to use iPhone, you must get a contract with Softbank.

~~~
chipperyman573
>Concrete terminal?

What do you mean?

>You must get a contract with SoftBank

Why? What do they offer that requires a contract? I'm not doubting you, but
everything I can find online is poorly-translated pages that don't tell me
much.

~~~
khedoros
I think that they mean that you need a carrier-provided device, rather than
bringing your own and popping in a SIM. As for the iPhone SoftBank thing: I'm
assuming that they're the only Japanese carrier that provides the iPhone
(Wikipedia's page on SoftBank says that starting with the iPhone 4S, it's
available through KDDI as well, so maybe the previous commenter's information
is out of date?)

~~~
ryao
SoftBank uses CDMA and LTE. I assume that they use SIM cards for LTE.

~~~
rangibaby
AFAIK the only way to get a SoftBank SIM is with a SoftBank phone. I walked
into a SoftBank store many years ago and tried to buy a SIM for my phone, they
thought it was very cute.

------
userbinator
I think people should just "smarten up" and stop buying locked-down
smartphones from telecoms. Almost every smartphone (and probably a lot of the
dumb ones) that can be bought online from places like
Aliexpress/Dealextreme/etc. has a working FM radio and are unlocked to be
usable with any provider.

The reason is that the "FM radio chip" is usually not a separate IC that has
to be designed in, but just a (tiny) part of an N-in-1 combo chip that
provides WiFi, GPS, and BT, so all it needs is for support to be in the
software to work. Here's one which has a FM _transmitter_ too:

[http://www.mediatek.com/en/products/connectivity/wifi/consum...](http://www.mediatek.com/en/products/connectivity/wifi/consumer-
electronics1/mt6630/)

Since many of these relatively brandless smartphones are a direct copy of a
reference design from the SoC manufacturer, designed to show off all the
features, they automatically inherit those features and the companies who make
them wouldn't spend extra effort just to remove functionality. The fact that
the market for them is heavily feature-driven also means one less bullet point
in the feature list is going to be noticed easily.

~~~
voltagex_
FM transmitters are great. No asking your friend to pull over to the side of
the road to pair your phone to their car stereo, no messing around with USB
cables, just tune your radio to 88.0 or similar.

My Nokia N900 had one and I've missed it ever since - it could even display
text via RDS!

~~~
dsharlet
You must be joking. The only place I've ever gotten adequate audio quality
from an FM transmitter is in a tunnel more than 1/4 mile long. They're crappy
even driving through the middle of nowhere where 9/10 radio stations are
noise.

~~~
yoo1I
No I'll have to agree with your parent. The N900 FM functionality ( among it's
other great advantages ) was pretty good. I used to use it all the time.

------
tfm
It was not so very long ago that the National Association of Broadcasters and
the RIAA were lobbying Congress for the inclusion of said FM chips [0] (or [1]
if you want the tldr version).

NAB is involved [2] in this latest heroic campaign for consumer choice too, of
course, although you wouldn't know it to look at the website [3].

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/radio-riaa-
manda...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/radio-riaa-mandatory-fm-
radio-in-cell-phones-is-the-future/)

[1] [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/18](https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2010/08/18)

[2] [http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-wide-
consum...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-wide-consumer-
awareness-campaign-launches-for-nextradio-300039436.html)

[3]
[http://freeradioonmyphone.org/about/](http://freeradioonmyphone.org/about/)

~~~
userbinator
Surprising to see the RIAA wanting this. Presumably they'd be against having
the feature to _record_ from the FM radio, which a lot of these phones with FM
radios do have.

~~~
tfm
RIAA may not be involved in this particular tilt.

Having radios everywhere is obviously always in the radio industry's best
interests. Back in 2010 the music industry got involved because they were
trying to wring extra performance rights fees out of radio, which the radio
folks clearly were not interested in, but the proposed compromise was that
music industry lobbyists would throw their weight behind the "radios
everywhere" thing, and radio would presumably benefit enough from that to
cover the new hefty performance fees.

The Performance Rights Act didn't go anywhere, looks like music industry tried
again last year with the "Fair Play, Fair Pay" bill.

------
madengr
No one has mentioned the antenna. Just because the silicon is there doesn't
mean you'll get decent reception without an antenna, and a dipole at 100 MHz
is 1.5 meters. Not trivial to put in a phone, unless they use the headphone
wires. If they do enable it, then people will just complain of poor reception.

~~~
gruez
>unless they use the headphone wires

that's what they use in most of the cases. on my phone, the radio refuses to
function until a headphone is plugged in.

~~~
Animats
It doesn't have to refuse to function. I have a Cat B15, with an FM radio. It
will warn you if you don't have a headphone plugged in, but you can continue
and try anyway. If you have line of sight to a strong station (in SF and can
see the Sutro Tower), it will work without an external antenna.

Of course, headphones as antennas will stop working when headphones go USB-C
or an Apple-specific connector.

~~~
Kliment
Why would they stop working? You just use the cable shield as the antenna.

------
castratikron
Okay, but at least on my phone (OnePlus One) the antenna to the FM radio is
grounded. My guess is that they didn't think it was worth it to design an
antenna or otherwise support the feature.

Am I wrong to think that other companies act the same? What else could be a
reason to disable the FM radio in a phone? When you're designing a product,
every feature costs money to develop and support, and in the race to the
bottom nature of consumer electronics it might make sense to not support FM
radio. Most of my friends (at least the normal ones) seem to prefer something
like Pandora over FM for background music.

What's stopping someone from selling a phone that has a functional FM radio? I
usually say the following jokingly, but this seems like a problem for the free
market to fix.

~~~
pjc50
_this seems like a problem for the free market to fix._

The market for phones in the US is not free because they're generally tied to
carriers, and the market for carriers is highly unfree because it's a natural
monopoly with a weak government regulator.

------
hudibras
Okay, serious question: why can't I watch over-the-air TV on my smartphone?

It's got a screen, audio, and at least one antenna. I'm no electrical engineer
but surely that's something that's at least theoretically possible...

~~~
sgrove
This used to be very big in South Korea at least, before (modern) smartphones
took off. I suspect it's less compelling than just watching internet video now
that we have that.

~~~
hudibras
I understand it for most things, but it's frustrating for live sporting events
when I can't stream it without paying (if it's available at all) to my
smartphone while at the same time I'm literally being bombarded with the free
TV signal for that event.

~~~
iokanuon
If you are able to do that, you could stream it through the Internet from your
house.

------
jimhefferon
OK, old guy here. I bought a Note 4, one reason was that it had a FM tuner.
The Verizon people told me it "wouldn't work on their network" which I took
for BS. Hve been unable to find software to use it. Is 57 just too old to get
it?

~~~
dTal
If you bought the phone from Verizon who know's what they've done to it -
however this app should work:
[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=radio&fdid=f...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=radio&fdid=fm.a2d.sf)

~~~
jimhefferon
Thanks I didn't find that. I'll give it a look.

------
jkot
In some countries owners of radio receiver must pay license fee to public
broadcaster. In my country its $24/year.

------
mgalka
Seems like this leaves a big unanswered question. Why haven't any
manufacturers done this? Seems like it would give their product a big
advantage.

In any case, as annoying as it may be that they don't offer free FM radio, I
don't see why for-profit businesses should be under any obligation to do so.

~~~
PeterisP
What do you mean "why haven't any manufacturers done this?"

The whole point is that manufacturers _have_ done this, the phone hardware and
software generally support FM radio, for many models the (non-US) advertising
material lists that feature - but the carriers have intentionally gone out of
their way to disable it.

------
Mendenhall
I am sure I am missing many points in understanding this, but it seems like it
would almost be a competitive advantage to now release a phone that had "free
radio" on it. I would use it all the time, and it appears it would be easy to
do if I am not too far off.

~~~
TylerE
I must ask where you live that there is FM remotely worth listening to?

Around here the only thing at all decent is NPR, and that content is all
available via podcast with much better audio fidelity, and seeking.

~~~
bufordsharkley
Check the low end of the dial. Most cities have one or more community/college
radio stations, which tend to be the most experimental/well-
curated/interesting sources of audio one can find.

------
pkaeding
I remember the Droid X had a FM tuner in it. I thought that was pretty cool
when I bought it, but then I never used it. When I bought it, I had forgotten
that there is never anything good on FM... (though FM tuner was not the reason
that I bought the phone)

------
askvictor
It's less of a telco issue and more of a manufacturer issue. Yes, most phones
have an FM receiver in them as part of the wifi+bluetooth chip. However, in
most cases the FM antenna pin of that chip isn't connected to anything, so it
just won't work. The manufacturer would need to connect this pin to the
headphone socket. Once that's done, the OS would need to support the FM radio.
Some manufacturers bake this into their ROMs, others don't. Telcos are the
last step, and might choose to strip the FM radio app out of the OS if they
have a cozy relationship with the manufacturer.

------
neito
ITT: Cars should support buggy whips, says buggy whip manufacturers.

And yes, I get the arguments that this is a feature already on the phone,
carriers are assholes, etc., but I've had multiple phones with this feature,
and found multiple people who have phones who have this feature, and who don't
care. And this was on Virgin Mobile, which on a freedom scale of 1 to Richard
Stallman is a solid Steve Ballmer.

------
lolive
In Europe, consuming radios via Internet is not such a big deal (fair use is
usually at 50gb/month). But if you have the chance to have great local
stations, listening to them via FM is draining almost no battery. And THAT is
a big deal !

~~~
michalskop
Might be in Western Europe, the packages may be as little as 50MB in "Central
and Eastern" Europe (and than considerably slow connection).

------
slr555
This will be awesome. We will have a whole new generation with real life
experience with intermodulation distortion, picket fence noise and host of
other quirky radio anomalies.

------
CajunAlexTrebec
I think the advantage of nearly every citizen walking around with an FM radio
for emergency mass communication purposes would be reason enough alone.

------
paulmd
Buy an unlocked phone and use a pay-by-month carrier. Anything less is paying
for a pittance of financial convenience with features and abuse.

