Claiming public safety benefits, the National Association of Broadcasters is proposing a new federal law that would force manufacturers to implant FM tuners in all mobile phones…
… tech groups said the idea amounted to candlestick makers campaigning against the electric light bulb: “Calls for an FM chip mandate are not about public safety but are instead about propping up a business which consumers are abandoning as they avail themselves of new, more consumer-friendly options.”
… “We understand their opposition,” Wharton said. “They’d rather usage based pricing, to have FM over IP so they can charge for it. That’s where their business model is headed.” FM broadcasts, he notes, are free.
All of the Nokia phones I’ve bought already have FM tuners in them and I actually use the feature semi frequently. But mandating this feature is just dumb.
Some interesting opposition photoshops;
Bang out Morse code distress messages from your Sprint EVO MC.
Tune into NOAA weather alerts with the iPhone 6 Shortwave.
Playback low fidelity ransom messages on the Retrograde Galaxy S.
Voted no, but I can see the safety argument after dealing with very limited usability of two cell phone on two different networks during the Oct storm. With so many people having cell phones and the country having such a robust FM broadcast network the ability to activate an emergency broadcast system via FM to cell phones probably looks very appealing to people like FEMA. The broadcast methods that the emergency broadcast system works with are reaching fewer and fewer people as people basically make their own stations with things like Pandora, iTunes and TV/Movie downloads.
One more way for the fed to use its power to serve a special interest. FM transmitters might not be a bad idea, but another unnecessary federal mandate is. No thanks.
Useful feature, I use mine all the time in my Tilt 2, but there are bigger fish to fry at the moment. Id rather see it be mandatory that the kids/young teens at the moment actually have some non text-based social interaction so they dont all turn out socially awkward weirdos.
lol besides, I’ve had FM tuners on my last couple of phones. Hardly used it. What are the odds of using it at the exact time I need to be emergencily alerted to something? (Yes I just made up a word. Learn it.) Mandating that all the wireless carriers have a system in place to text bomb emergency alerts would be much better.
I was thinking more the ability for the phone to automatically start playing the emergency broadcast message, regardless of what you were doing with it at the time. Doing the same via the cell network won’t work because in a true emergency the cell networks quickly crumble under the traffic of people making phone calls, assuming the disaster didn’t take down the tower near you in the first place. FM radio using the existing broadcast towers in the country is a far more reliable means of one way communication due to it’s onewayness (my made up word) and vastly longer range per tower.
Interesting idea, but what would send the signal to your phone to start the emergency message? If the cellular network is down or maxed out that won’t work, and it can’t be a radio signal that activates it because there are only limited frequencies… and I’d imagine it would be easy to hack.
It might be better just to reinforce & expand the existing cell network.
How about we don’t bother with any of it since there’s no value to emergency broadcast systems?
The Emergency Broadcast System (“This is only a test”) was never used during its lifetime from 1963 to 1997. In 1997 it was replaced with the Emergency Alert System, which is still in place but wasn’t even activated on 9/11.
Has there ever been a time when an emergency broadcast system would have been useful? Maybe in tornado alley?
Where I grew out outside Milwaukee WI, we would get that message or the alarm over the weather radio we had in the house for Severe Thunderstorm Warning/Tornado Watches/Tornado Warnings.
And I disagree with it not being used, I saw it used all the time growing up and still to this day on regular broadcast tv channels, always for weather things though.
It’s never been used on a national level. On a regional level it gets used all the time.
I think I’ve just gotten so sick of federal scare tactics just from walking through airports and hearing “Todays threat level is… insert random color here” that I’m soured on the whole idea.
