WASHINGTON — Millions of Americans use their smartphones every day to stream music from services such as Pandora or Spotify. Others use mobile devices to access podcasts or radio shows. These applications don’t work without a connection to WiFi or mobile data. But what if you could listen to that same content on your phone via an old-school technology: FM radio?
That’s what the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission just proposed. Unknown to many consumers, most smartphones come with FM radio receivers already built in. But good luck trying to get a signal from your local station, because these antennas are largely inactive.
“As of last fall, only about 44 percent of the top-selling smartphones in the United States have activated FM chips,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said at an industry conference Thursday. “By comparison, in Mexico that number is about 80 percent.”
Urging companies to switch on FM chips — long supported by the nation’s broadcasters — Pai said the move could allow smartphone users to save on their data usage and to get the same emergency alerts that drivers get in their cars. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has said that the ability to get those alerts in a crisis, such as when Internet networks go down, could save lives.
