T-Mobile Says Yes To The FM Radio Chip

John Legere

FM radio chips are pretty common in international smartphones, allowing users to tune in to terrestrial radio stations and not use up their often limited cellular data. However, those chips are often removed or disabled in phones released in the US.

That could be changing soon for T-Mobile phones, though. John Legere Friday sent out a Tweet saying that T-Mobile is “saying yes to FM chip” and that the magenta carrier will “push our OEM partners to support!”

Hey @NextRadioApp – We heard you! We’re saying yes to FM chip and will push our OEM partners to support! #sayyestoFMchip

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) August 14, 2015

The Tweet is in response to a campaign from NextRadio, a mobile app that lets you listen to radio stations on your smartphone, that called for T-Mobile customers to let Legere know that they wanted a working FM chip in their phones.

Legere’s tweet comes less than a month after AT&T agreed to specify that the FM radio chip be activated in Android phones manufactured in 2016 and beyond.

The coupe for the radio industry was touted by widely by NextRadio and TagStation, the Emmis Communications-owned entities that promote an FM listening app and station support infrastructure.

T-Mobile is the third major carrier to back the FM chip. In 2013, Sprint agreed to enable its customers to listen to local FM radio stations from a broad spectrum of radio companies and aggregators on select Android and Windows smartphones. The FM radio capability is delivered through the NextRadio tuner application or other radio apps or services.

NextRadio President Paul Brenner thanks Legere for the decision:



Advocates say using an FM chip to listen to radio on your smartphone doesn’t consume data like it does when you use an app like TuneIn Radio.  The FM radio chip also has the benefit of not consuming as much battery life as content that’s streamed using cellular data.