“FCC chairman Ajit Pai has advocated for the activation of FM radio receivers built into nearly every smartphone, as part of opening remarks he made at the Future of Radio and Audio Symposium in Washington D.C. yesterday,” Joe Rossignol reports for MacRumors. “Many smartphones sold today, including iPhones, have an FM receiver built into the LTE modem that would allow people to listen to FM radio over the air; however, many carriers and phone makers have not enabled the functionality, forcing users to use an app to stream FM radio over Wi-Fi or cellular data.”
“Pai cited a NAB study that found only 44% of the top-selling smartphones in the United States had activated FM receivers as of last year,” Rossignol reports. “The vast majority—94%—of the non-activated smartphones are iPhones, according to the study.”
Rossignol reports, “Pai said that while he will keep speaking out about the benefits of activating FM receivers in smartphones, he is a believer in free markets and the rule of law, and he thereby cannot support a government mandate requiring activation of these chips, nor does he believe the FCC has the power to issue said mandate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let the market decide… Oh, wait, it already has.