The point of the article is to have them there for emergencies since we already have systems in place to broadcast emergency info over radio, and it’s a lot simpler to implement than satellite for when cell signal is down.
I don’t see the necessity for FM Radio to be used for this. They’ve removed them from most of today’s phones, and adding them back would be just as complex as adding something like LoRa for emergency messages.
LoRa could also be used for mesh-messaging, and bring some added privacy features that people genuinely would have a use for.
I guarantee this article has FM Radio station money behind it.
I’m a qualified amateur radio operator and I work in IT as my day job, if you can’t see how bad it would be to continue to put all our eggs into one basket for datacom, primarily in the hands of poorly regulated private cellphone companies, then I can’t really help you.
Fact is, 80-110 MHz FM requires less infrastructure (aka fewer broadcast points) to more completely cover an area, and it’s almost impossible to have it blocked by buildings/walls/vehicles, etc. Sure, the signal might go to shit, but it’s at least able to be heard even in very challenging conditions. It also takes nearly no power to run. Receiver chips can be made so small that it would be a trivial addition to make for most cellular manufacturers. There’s no licensing fees or service fees so the entire process is free from top to bottom.
Add that to the fact that it’s already deployed, regulated and configured for emergencies, and you have a very low implementation cost for a very reliable and robust service.
The idea here isn’t to add it so we can listen to FM commercials all day. Anyone I know who had FM on their cellphone, didn’t use it; and I won’t suggest that anyone will use it now… but if there’s a major catastrophe and the cellular networks go down, having a recieve-only way of getting emergency information to those who are otherwise disconnected from everything is a big deal. A lot of households are going digital only for their entertainment and getting rid of old stereos and hi-fi units with radio built in for all HDMI systems that make their Netflix work nicely. Many also have zero land line service so once the internet stops functioning and the cell towers go out, the only method of communication these people will have is standing on their porch and screaming into the void.
I’ve monitored communications during major outages, like sitting hurricane hits on the contental US and heard the radio traffic stating that there’s people at x location and all consumer/commercial communication systems are inoperable. The only thing working was an amateur owned and operated repeater network to relay the communication across the region; I was listening to an internet relay on the outskirts of the coverage area and it was clear that they would have had no outbound communication if they didn’t have those repeater nets. Inbound, I’m sure FM and AM radio was still operable, so anyone with an FM set could hear news and alerts as they happened.
Radio is also nearly instant, while LoRA mesh networks rely on people having nodes to relay the messages and the messages may be interrupted while a node is down. The first isn’t a thing yet, the second is difficult to do at best. Amateur FM cells can transmit over many miles potentially several dozen, meanwhile most LoRA can’t reach a fraction of that far, requiring a massively larger number of them, and each one is a potential point of failure.
With regulation, commercial broadcast FM sites are required by law to participate in the emergency broadcast system, no such regulation exists for LoRA.
Under normal operating conditions, FM is fairly useless, unless you feel like listening to ads, but in an emergency, it can be the only way for you to be told that, though the weather seems to have gotten better, it’s temporary and you should stay where you are.
All my handheld radio transceivers have commercial FM recievers built in, so either way, I’m covered. I also have several dedicated FM and shortwave receiving radios around. I have adequate communication capability for an emergency. I’m not perfectly set up, even remotely, but I’ll be able to reach out to someone if I’m without power, internet, cellphone coverage, etc, during a major event. I can call for help, get information about the situation and it’s duration, I can reach out over 10 miles or more to communicate with others, all with my handheld.
And you want to take all this infrastructure and preparedness that we as a society have developed over more than a century, and flush it all away… because why? You have a hard-on for LoRA? You think old tech is useless in today’s day and age? Because you have a problem with broadcast radio trying to survive, a service that’s free to you, by playing ads?
Do you realize how stupid you sound?
Most people won’t read until that last paragraph, ha ha.
Thanks for writing this up. I have always been concerned that my car is the nearest FM radio. I always kept a clock radio stashed in my basement “workshop” area but it was thrown out at some point along with the old rotary phone I had with it.
My son has a beginner electronics kit that can build a very low powered transmitter so I got him a cheap usb chargeable AM/FM receiver with an aux in, speaker, and headphone jack for next to nothing. The antenna is actually extendable and doesn’t suck. Going to stash it when he’s done with it. Could come in handy.
Well this was a fun read and makes me want to be better prepared for a potential real emergency.
I think FM Broadcast is great, but with regard to phones aren’t we missing something here? For a phone to even receive FM broadcast headphones have to be plugged in, it’s been a requirement for any FM RX capable phone I’ve ever had, for antenna purposes. So with regard to the argument for mobiles to have FMrx if such functionality were to become common place we’d need to see the return of headphone jacks and people would need to be carrying corded headphones for it to function.
I think this capability is a great idea, but the limitations forced on us by losing the headphones socket as well as societys fascination with making everything wireless at any cost is a little concerning.
I’ve always considered average to good quality wired buds to be great, but it seems they really are on their way out.
In addition to all that @MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca said, implementing an am or fm receiver on an existing device is as easy as plopping down one of the existing bga chips that has an antenna input and an audio output. here’s one of the bigger ones that needs a killer 3mm x 3mm land pattern. It’s also only $1.79 or so, which is expensive for an ic, but in the context of a phone wouldn’t contribute significantly to the cost of the device.
The need for an 1/8” out would be the worst part because ironically, phone jacks suck for uhh… phones.
