Good Vibes For FM Radio Chips In Cellphones

• Wheeler:  FM in phones part of public safety debate.   

Tom Wheeler (Bloomberg photo)

FCC chair Tom Wheeler indicated Tuesday that he sees the question of whether FM should be installed and activated in cell phones as part of a broader review of public safety, according to InsideRadio.

While he stopped short of saying the FCC should order carriers to turn FM on, his comments at the NAB Show suggested he doesn’t buy the wireless industry’s contention that it’s just a “government bailout” for radio.

Wheeler said FM on phones “fits into the debate” of what the new 21st century paradigm of public safety should be. “We ought to be having that discussion,” he said.

Chairman Wheeler also had 'positive' reaction to NextRadio.  InsideRadio reports Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan had a brief one-on-one meeting with FCC chairman Tom Wheeler at the NAB Show in Las Vegas yesterday.  The timing of the informal meeting was good — Wheeler had just received a NextRadio demo by Sprint product manager Eric Williams on the convention’s exhibit floor.  “He said it was fabulous and said we’ll be talking more,” Smulyan recalls.  “We’re not asking for a mandate, we just think that it makes sense that the carriers make a deal with the radio industry.”  Smulyan says he was encouraged by Wheeler’s positive reaction to the technology.  “He clearly understood the public safety issue and he understood the data issue.”

The wireless industry’s trade group, the CTIA, has been leading the fight against requiring FM chips on phones, saying the cell phone industry has invested millions of dollars building out its own emergency alerting system.  But the NAB's Gordon Smith explains,  “Every time there’s a national emergency and all of those broadband apps go dark because they crash either from congestion or the towers literally fall.”  Smith noted Super Storm Sandy was only the latest example of that.  “The constant is radio,” he said.

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