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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 20 2017, @07:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-the-catch? dept.

In a speech given to the Future of Radio and Audio Symposium (PDF), Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai encouraged smartphone makers to activate FM radio chips, but stopped short of supporting a government mandate to do so:

As you know, the vast majority of smartphones sold in the United States do, in fact, contain FM chips. The problem is that most of them aren't activated. As of last fall, only about 44% of the topselling smartphones in the United States have activated FM chips, and the percentage is lower in Canada. By comparison, in Mexico that number is about 80%. So it's not just that the United States and Canada could be doing better. We could be doing a lot better. It seems odd that every day we hear about a new smartphone app that lets you do something innovative, yet these modern-day mobile miracles don't enable a key function offered by a 1982 Sony Walkman.

You could make a case for activating chips on public safety grounds alone. The former head of our Federal Emergency Management Administration has spoken out in support of this proposal. The FCC has an expert advisory panel on public safety issues that has also advocated enabling FM radio chips on smartphones. It pointed out that, "[h]aving access to terrestrial FM radio broadcasts, as opposed to streaming audio services, may enable smartphone users to receive broadcast-based EAS alerts and other vital information in emergency situations—particularly when the wireless network is down or overloaded."

Moreover, most consumers would love to access some of their favorite content over-the-air, while using one-sixth of the battery life and less data. As more and more Americans use activated FM chips in their smartphones, consumer demand for smartphones with activated FM chips should continue to increase.

I'll keep speaking out about the benefits of activating FM chips. Having said that, as a believer in free markets and the rule of law, I cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips. I don't believe the FCC has the power to issue a mandate like that, and more generally I believe it's best to sort this issue out in the marketplace. For despite the low numbers, we are seeing progress; in the last two years, the percentage of top-selling smartphones in the United States that have activated FM chips has risen from less than 25% to 44%.

Reported at Chicago Tribune and Recode.


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  • (Score: 2) by Username on Monday February 20 2017, @12:45PM

    by Username (4557) on Monday February 20 2017, @12:45PM (#469245)

    How the fuck do you activate a chip? Short some pins? or they mean like a software lockout. untuneable.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 20 2017, @02:31PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 20 2017, @02:31PM (#469263)

    Sorta, imagine a linux box without a 3c509 ethernet driver compiled in, but a card physically installed. You can see it by running lspci but without a driver to run it, you ain't getting /dev/eth0

    I remember compiling my own kernels until at least a couple years into the modular kernel era, say late 90s.

    On the microcontroller level say you attach a I2C temperature sensor to a I2C bus, like I did last weekend. It'll be present and load the bus down and waste microamps of standby current, but do nothing at all until you make some kind of driver that actually talks to it.

    • (Score: 2) by Username on Monday February 20 2017, @11:29PM

      by Username (4557) on Monday February 20 2017, @11:29PM (#469493)

      Driver level stuff is magic, I let other people do that.