Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature)
Phones should have FM radio again (as an emergency safety feature)
Radio access could be a critical safety feature in the years ahead.
I didn't even realize Qualcomm removed the built in FM radio from their chips. Huh.
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Or you could...ya know...just use the emergency safety features.
This is a ploy by broadcasters. Just like "think of the children!!" - they want more listeners to toss more ads at. They've been tossing this article around for a bit now, under the guise of "safety", because they are losing listeners.
i dont understand. what do the broadcasters get out of this? is it just exposure about the existence of radio? u can always not use the radio in your phone
FM radio has been removed from most phones for a while now. They want it added back. Having an FM radio in the device for "emergencies", means that now phone producers will be required to have working FM radio capabilities, and if they have that much - it's a no-brainer for them because they're required to have it, to just add the FM radio app to the device by default. THAT is what broadcasters get out of this. They don't actually give a shit about using FM capabilities for emergencies - it's just a convenient way for broadcasters to force phone manufacturers to add the capability back when they don't really care to.
i get that, but i feel like most people still wont listen to radio, even if they have an unremovable app for it.
There are OVER 6 billion smartphones in the world.
"Most People" not listening to radio, still leaves a FUCKTON who do/will.
There are over 250m in the US alone.
ok. now im confused as to what youre arguing. im trynna say that whether or not a phone has inbuilt fm radio hardware, it wont really sway people to listen to radio more. i understand a lot of people listen to radio still, and some dont care about it. but internet radio apps exist, so i dont think many people would change their listening habits based on whether they need to download an app (and connect to internet). not saying fm radio hardware is bad, just that i dont believe the broadcasters would really care enough to advocate for it. id say an overwhelming majority would prefer to listen to the radio in their car, alarm clock, or standalone device.
So why add FM radio back into phones then if FM radio exists in multiple places around these people already anyhow? Why do they need to force an additional device to have it?
Additionally -- in some countries, don't companies have to pay a licensing fee to broadcasters in order to add this?
What emergency safety features? Making a 911 call?
The last time a major weather event happened it was really hard to get updated information, the power was out, internet was down. I only had an old battery powered radio that still had an FM tuner.
As time passes fewer and fewer devices have the FM tuners, and it's less and less likely I have spare working batteries for them. A phone on the other hand, I'm already setup with backup batteries I can use to recharge it, I don't need to be as "prepared" to be able to stay up to date if it could still pick up the radio
All cell phones have emergency alert capabilities. They don't need a connection to the normal service tower, it uses any tower in the area that is available, and emergency broadcasts are put out and tested all the time. If you live in the USA, you'll likely get one today at 2pm even...
You fundamentally misunderstand the technology. For push notifications and amber alerts and such to work, you need a personal 1:1 digital connection to a nearby cell tower. The range on that connection is not very far, and every alert needs to be sent individually.
An FM tower could broad-beam disaster information for tens of miles around with much simpler technology, out of one location on generator power. It is a far more reliable way to get information about a major disaster out to everybody simultaneously with far fewer infrastructure layers involved. No need to spool literally millions of alert pings out.
Also a continuous voice stream carries a lot more info than a damn push notification - obviously.
far, and every alert needs to be sent individually.
The alerting system in the US can broadcast them.
The emergency alert system isn't meant for informational updates.
Using it to broadcast updates on when power is going to be restored isn't what it's meant for
It's granular. It CAN be used for that. It's used for Amber alerts already. Easy enough to make additional categories.
When COVID-19 started, the county health department where I was decided to repeatedly use it to blast non-updates. And in the US, unlike the Amber Alert stuff, the general alerting stuff cannot be disabled; that means that you're trusting the party who can send alerts to not abuse it. When you consider that they were causing everyone in the metro area to stop whatever they were doing -- meetings or whatever -- and look at their phones for a message that said "stores are still closed, continue to social-distance", it was incredibly obnoxious.
Honestly, I want the ability to at least disable county warnings. At least temporarily. So far, the federal government hasn't use it other than for very infrequent tests, but county officials haven't shown that restraint.
That being said, I suppose it could be worse. One major point of contention in Germany after the 2021 European floods that killed a bunch of people was that, even though they knew that they were going to have to flood the towns along the rivers, they didn't have the emergency alerting thing set up, so they couldn't notify people that they were about to be flooded and to get to high ground immediately.
It sounds like some emergency-handling people in Germany caught flak for that and that they went out and banged their alerting system into shape after that.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/germany-to-warn-of-future-floods-with-mobile-phone-alerts-2495503
https://www.thelocal.de/20221206/all-cell-phone-users-in-germany-to-be-part-of-disaster-warning-day
That being said, we also had that bogus Hawaii ballistic missile alert, which wasn't great.
Here in Canada it isn't granular, every alert is sent at the "presidential" level
What FM broadcasters don't have an internet radio presence? Arguably that's more profitable from an ads standpoint since you can get analytics about who's listening, vs FM radio where you're just broadcasting to whoever's out there.