Got FM Radio? During an emergency, old technology may be your best technology.
The same devices and services that connect us every day, can isolate us during an emergency.
I am a late adopter of a smart phone. Now that I’ve got one, I can’t imagine life without it. It’s like having a superpower. I can send a message, snap a photo, surf the web, check the weather, find a restaurant, and make impulse buys (while monitoring my soaring credit card bill in real-time).
I rely solely on streaming services to listen to music while in the car and at home. While I used to interrupt streaming sessions to tune in to the local traffic reports during my commute, I now look to Waze to navigate around the city.
I’m not alone, more and more people are turning to streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, and Google All Access. The result is less and less exposure to FM radio. The news broadcast association is obviously disappointed, but it could be argued that it’s simply a sign of the times and change is inevitable.
But what happens when our cell towers are choked by traffic, either from an emergency or simply a large event?
I’ve found myself in a few situations where it was impossible to monitor a situation or communicate via smartphone. And I live in a metropolitan area which in theory has decent cell coverage. It doesn’t have to be a worst case scenario. Even when the event didn’t cause actual damage to the cellular network, my phone was rendered useless by the competing cell traffic.
So how do you find out what’s going on when your smartphone isn’t working?
I learned that most of today’s smart phones have FM radios inside of them. However, the FM chip is not activated on most devices. The reason is because most mobile makers decided not to activate the FM chip. The argument against activating the FM chip is that customers aren’t requesting it and prefer streaming their news and music. Some argue the reason is a bit more nefarious, and by not activating the FM chip, carriers see higher data use and revenues.
Remember the sound of the weekly Emergency Broadcast System Alert Signal?
To further exacerbate the issue of FM availability, “cord cutting” is now a thing. Cord cutting is the practice of canceling or forgoing cable television or a landline telephone and relying on an Internet-based or wireless service. While a late adopter of a smart phone, I was an early adopter of cord cutting. As I binge watch season X of series Y, I won’t receive local notifications or continuous updates via local television broadcasts.
These trends have gotten the attention of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Administrator Fugate. Fugate can be heard here describing his concerns.
So what should we do?
- See if your phone’s FM chip is activated.
- If it’s not, you can request that it be activated.
- Pick up an inexpensive radio since access to and continuously monitoring local news broadcasts can be critical during an emergency.
- And of course consider other steps you can take to prepare for emergencies.
Much of the attention on the FM chip activation issue circles around market shares while the public safety issue seems to be an afterthought. The devices we’ve come to depend on may not be there when we need them the most.
Mobile carriers argue that customers aren’t demanding FM radio activation, so should we start demanding it?
Why can’t we have our streaming services AND our FM too? If you think FM radio should be accessible via your smart phone, please share.
We try to find alternate views to an issue, in this case, it was difficult to find an argument against FM chip activation in our smartphones. We are interested in your counterpoints.
More information can be found here: http://freeradioonmyphone.org/
