I am sure I am missing many points in understanding this, but it seems like it would almost be a competitive advantage to now release a phone that had "free radio" on it. I would use it all the time, and it appears it would be easy to do if I am not too far off.
I would guess that the reason for this is that most smart phone makers have online music stores or streaming music services they would prefer to steer users to.
At least some Windows phones have this. It works fine on my Icon - fm radio is a default app. I assumed it was a holdover from the Zune days, where that was a selling point.
There is a default one? Because I don't have any and can't find one for Cyanogenmod on my Galaxy Note 2. Samsung's rom had one but it refuses to install under Cyanogenmod.
Check the low end of the dial. Most cities have one or more community/college radio stations, which tend to be the most experimental/well-curated/interesting sources of audio one can find.
I think people should just "smarten up" and stop buying locked-down smartphones from telecoms. Almost every smartphone (and probably a lot of the dumb ones) that can be bought online from places like Aliexpress/Dealextreme/etc. has a working FM radio and are unlocked to be usable with any provider.
The reason is that the "FM radio chip" is usually not a separate IC that has to be designed in, but just a (tiny) part of an N-in-1 combo chip that provides WiFi, GPS, and BT, so all it needs is for support to be in the software to work. Here's one which has a FM transmitter too:
Since many of these relatively brandless smartphones are a direct copy of a reference design from the SoC manufacturer, designed to show off all the features, they automatically inherit those features and the companies who make them wouldn't spend extra effort just to remove functionality. The fact that the market for them is heavily feature-driven also means one less bullet point in the feature list is going to be noticed easily.
FM transmitters are great. No asking your friend to pull over to the side of the road to pair your phone to their car stereo, no messing around with USB cables, just tune your radio to 88.0 or similar.
My Nokia N900 had one and I've missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!
> My Nokia N900 had [an FM transmitter] and I've missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!
You know, that's an amazingly depressing thought: how many other dead-simple technologies have we been prevented from using because of ingrained interests?
OTOH, Bluetooth is certainly a better idea for personal telephone calls.
You must be joking. The only place I've ever gotten adequate audio quality from an FM transmitter is in a tunnel more than 1/4 mile long. They're crappy even driving through the middle of nowhere where 9/10 radio stations are noise.
No I'll have to agree with your parent. The N900 FM functionality ( among it's other great advantages ) was pretty good. I used to use it all the time.
I simply can't listen to commercial FM radio these days-its the audio equivalent of going to a website without ublock. The few stations I listen to usually have apps (classical and public radio) and I'm often in wifi territory anyways, so no data charges (like at work).
I've certainly been spoiled by my home music library with no advertisements or commercials.
SiriusXM satellite radio is the same way as FM broadcast radio with all the commercials. I pay an outrageous amount to them every month for service -- for my truck, car, motorcycle, and the Internet streaming "add-on" (I have a tabletop radio on a nightstand next to my bed) -- and get so annoyed by all the commercials.
I'm not sure how much they make off of me, as an individual subscriber, per month, from the advertisers but I would happily pay much more every month (probably another 50% or so) for a 100% commercial-free option -- and I'm sure that's gotta be way more than what they're getting from the advertisers for me.
1) I do like the service and use it all the time and 2) convenience.
I mostly drive my truck, which I just bought in August 2015. SiriusXM was free for 90 days. Before it expired, I received a "promo" deal in the mail and paid for a year or service at that time.
Likewise, I bought my car in June 2014. SiriusXM was free for 90 days and then I signed up for, I believe, a quarterly package. I, personally, have only driven my car twice in the last six months or so -- probably less than five times since I bought the truck. My girlfriend has a Jeep but she drives my car most of the time, so I keep that subscription active because she prefers the satellite radio over FM, Pandora/iTunes/etc. Otherwise, I would cancel service in the car.
I also have a package and receiver on my Harley. Due to the weather, I get to ride it perhaps half of the year. It's an inconvenience to call up and add it to my account in the spring and then remember to remove it as winter nears and the bike goes into the garage for months. Besides, we occasionally have nice days in the winter when I can ride and I want it to "just work".
Then, there's the Internet streaming service. I have the SiriusXM app on my iPhone (so I can play it via Bluetooth when in someone else's vehicle, etc.) and Roku and we have a "tabletop" receiver next to the bed. We often turn it on when going to bed, the girlfriend will listen to it while getting ready for work, etc.
In short, I do like the service. I'm probably paying them more than I should but I likely won't cancel it anytime soon. As I said above, though, I'd gladly pay them more for an "{ad|commercial}-free" version.
I spent some time searching for a good external transmitter a while back.
Turns out they're heavily regulated by the FCC. It all boils down to the requirement that you can't interfere with anyone else's reception. Any transmission strength that gives acceptable quality would do that. So they are artificially stunted.
It's possible that your N900 is exceeding legal signal strengths.
> No asking your friend to pull over to the side of the road to pair your phone to their car stereo
I drive rentals a lot. Like, a lot. Across dozens of brands and models, it's never taken me more than a minute to pair my phone.
Also, the 3.5mm aux plug is even easier to use than tuning a radio to any frequency, and the quality is vastly better. It's a long time since I've seen a car without it.
>I think people should just "smarten up" and stop buying locked-down smartphones from telecoms
Even the Nexus phones don't have FM radio, probably for the same reasons (Google makes money when you buy music through Google Play, or stream it via Google Play Music).
Aha, I was mistaken, it came with a separate antenna, after all. Still cool, though. Or perhaps it could use headphones, like the FM radio? Most of the info is in Portuguese so I'm not sure.
Ed: Here's an example of it being used. There's a little antenna plugged in the headphone port. Pretty neat trick.
That trick is usually used for FM radios according to other comments. FM radio is in the VHF band, so that would probably also work for VHF TV broadcasts too (more so low VHF than high VHF). I doubt that it would work for UHF, although someone who has actually used it would need to confirm that.
Most TV channels are on UHF and nearly all antennas are designed for UHF. They are able to get poor reception of the high VHF channels and no reception of the low VHF channels. The "world's smallest" TV antenna that I linked should have been designed for UHF too.
Few months ago got an LG G4: the "unlocked international" version had a locked bootloader so you couldn't change the software, but the europe and t-mobile versions didn't. So, sometimes it can be the reverse.
Do note that the phone designer still need to hook up the FM antenna to the combo chip. Space inside the phone is precious, and everything has a cost...
It was not so very long ago that the National Association of Broadcasters and the RIAA were lobbying Congress for the inclusion of said FM chips [0] (or [1] if you want the tldr version).
NAB is involved [2] in this latest heroic campaign for consumer choice too, of course, although you wouldn't know it to look at the website [3].
Surprising to see the RIAA wanting this. Presumably they'd be against having the feature to record from the FM radio, which a lot of these phones with FM radios do have.
Having radios everywhere is obviously always in the radio industry's best interests. Back in 2010 the music industry got involved because they were trying to wring extra performance rights fees out of radio, which the radio folks clearly were not interested in, but the proposed compromise was that music industry lobbyists would throw their weight behind the "radios everywhere" thing, and radio would presumably benefit enough from that to cover the new hefty performance fees.
The Performance Rights Act didn't go anywhere, looks like music industry tried again last year with the "Fair Play, Fair Pay" bill.
No one has mentioned the antenna. Just because the silicon is there doesn't mean you'll get decent reception without an antenna, and a dipole at 100 MHz is 1.5 meters. Not trivial to put in a phone, unless they use the headphone wires. If they do enable it, then people will just complain of poor reception.
It doesn't have to refuse to function. I have a Cat B15, with an FM radio. It will warn you if you don't have a headphone plugged in, but you can continue and try anyway. If you have line of sight to a strong station (in SF and can see the Sutro Tower), it will work without an external antenna.
Of course, headphones as antennas will stop working when headphones go USB-C or an Apple-specific connector.
I've been able to receive most local FM broadcast station with little to no antenna. They are so powerful that you generally don't need a special antenna to receive them...
Antennas capable of picking up 535KHz to 1700KHz are very different than those intended for 700Mhz to 2600Mhz and 2.4GHz to 5.8GHz that cell phone antennas are intended to use today.
Both FM and AM should require separate antennas in the phone, although maybe the one intended for cellular communications could be used for FM without failing to picture up anything at all. It would be surprising if someone could avoid a separate antenna for AM.
It was jaw dropping for me to see how high handed American telocs are, when I first experienced it. I took a friend's phone and tried to make a wifi hotspot. I was shell shocked as AT&T popup announced that I cannot do that!
Try doing this in India and no consumer would touch your phone. Contracts are not allowed in India. I am mildly proud that third world country telcos are much more open compared to western ones
This was true years ago but less and less as time passes. Buy a phone from TMobile and it'll have the Android built-in tethering removed and their crapware installed.
Today even with a Nexus phone from Google (no TM software installed) you still have to jump through hoops to tether.
Also, their CEO is kind of a dick, and seems childish on Twitter after the whole EFF thing.
I've had Nexus and iPhone devices on multiple TMobile plans, never had any trouble tethering: just turn it on like normal for the OS.
The only thing I've had happen was I think I remember some years back, I was on a grandfathered unlimited plan from before smartphones and tethering were ubiquitous, they started new plans with unlimited data+tethering and if I tethered too much it'd redirect to a captive page saying "please don't" and throttle me pretty heavily to convince me to switch, but the Simple Choice plan I have now is actually cheaper than that plan was.
The Nexus 6 was sold by T-Mobile directly and has the stock standard tethering stuff within (with no T-Mobile-specific tethering software). I'm running one right now. Standard ROM it came with (OTA updated to 6.0.1 + May 2016 update), stock, unrooted.
> Today even with a Nexus phone from Google (no TM software installed) you still have to jump through hoops to tether.
Hi, I turned on my direct-from-Google Nexus 5's hotspot, connected my laptop, and posted this comment. T-Mobile's my provider, and I don't have any of their software on my phone. I also haven't taken any special steps to enable it (just the usual change in the settings menu). I'm curious which "hoops" you're referring to.
I've been nothing but impressed with TMO. Back in my Sidekick 1/2 days they were pretty good... jumped to ATT for original iPhone and stuck with them until iPhone 6 when I switched back to TMO. Very pleased with everything about them once again.
I've been a happy T-mobile customer for years. Am on their $30 prepaid (unlimited data 5G at LTE speeds, 100 minutes) plan on Nexus phones. Have never bought "subsidized" carrier phones. 100 MB tethering (excluding HTTPs and VPN traffic) is included, which serves my needs. Ported my main number to Google Voice and all my calls go over data. Coverage has never been an issue either. Highly recommend T-mobile.
Yes - I used that plan too and it works great. Only minor issue is that it doesn't provide domestic data roaming in case there's no native T-Mobile coverage. But if you're in an area that has good T-Mobile coverage and if you're not doing a lot of phone calls this plan is definitely one of the best options.
Also afaik T-Mobile officially states that only 100MB of tethering is included, but it seems that they haven't enforced this for some time now.
Try signing up in a T-Mobile store without a credit check. My experience is that they will lie to you about it not existing until you go sign up on their website. Then they suddenly had always known about it. Then they will fail to automatically bill your credit card. They will disable your device each month requiring you to call them to straighten things out until you cancel. If the device is a hotspot that you use occasionally, this results in you never having it working until you need it. He when you cancel, they will send you a ~$6 refund on a gift card and then a bill for the ~$6. Then they will refuse to process payment over the phone should you fail to remember some number for a cancelled account because they think you might be trying to fradulently pay a bill. That was my experience with t-mobile in a nutshell.
Also, their employees will lie about their credit check not being a hard pull on your credit report that harms your credit. The Internet has plenty of reports to the contrary. Having your credit run for a hotspot like they want to do is ridiculous. No MNVO ever required once from me.
That said, T-Mobile's network is fairly good here in NY. Their customer service and sales are horrible though. I am not sure if the others are much better as I have not interacted with them much. My first cell phone was on Virgin Mobile USA, which spared me from experiencing this nonsense until later in life.
I went to a T-Mobile store in the Nexus 4 era to get a prepaid SIM card. No credit check. I gave them $80 and they gave me a SIM card with unlimited everything. When the 30 days were over it stopped working until I made an account to give them more money. No credit check.
In that case, my experience last year was not a hard rule. It definitely was one of the worst experiences that I have ever had with any company though.
Even at their worst, T-Mobile is worlds beyond AT&T and Verizon. That's not really a very high bar to clear, but I'm a lot more comfortable after switching from AT&T to T-Mobile. It seems like every month I was fighting with AT&T's billing department over the same stupid issue.
So true. It's easy to forget one of Apple's greatest accomplishments is breaking the telecom industries stranglehold as mobile software gatekeepers. Telecoms along with cable are still two of the biggest impediments to technology progress in the US.
.. what? Here they were the first phone (and only, because as it turns out, that business model doesn't work) to be exclusively offered through a single carrier.
Right, and they signed that exclusive agreement with AT&T as compensation to allow the iPhone on their network. Before this agreement, mobile phone software in the US had to be approved and provisioned through the carriers.
This is not the case on current AT&T consumer smartphone plans and hasn't been for quite some time. OTOH, it was true on lots of older plans; it might either still be true on business plans or your employer may be on an old plan (AT&T doesn't tend to force people off old, bad plans when new, better plans come out, and just leave them on the old ones that aren't offered anymore until they actively choose to switch off them.)
For almost all corporate mobile plans the data is billed on a meter, so the company has the option of turning off tethering for their accounts. Talk to your company IT folks and see if the limit is due to plan or because they wanted to limit your data spend on the account.
I totally agree. I'm from Kenya and reading this comment section is jaw dropping.
A Telco blocking features of a phone, any features is like stealing from you. I buy an LG or Samsung for the features listed on the box or website and if I found a feature to be missing the box and phone will be promptly returned and I'd demand my money back, and contract canceled! It's just an unthinkable thing for a Telco to do.
Generally, people in the U.S. buy a phone from the telco itself, and specific companies customize the software and packaging of their phones. Sometimes, different models are produced for sale by specific telcos.
I understand and agree with the outrage you feel, but the status quo is powerful and slow to change. There are telcos that explicitly provide tethering in their plans as a standard feature, and bringing an outside device to operate with the telco is easier than it used to be, so maybe things are starting to shift.
You can. I just bought my phone separately because Verizon wanted an extra $20 a month if I got the subsidized phone + contract, but I'd rather not have a contract.
They act like you need a whitelisted IMEI, but the network doesn't actually care. The tricky part is getting a SIM activated on their network.
The store managers pretend like they can't give/sell just a SIM. They're supposed to give them to you for free, but lie to sell you a handset. You can buy them from resellers who DGAF. They also pretend you need a whitelisted IMEI to activate the SIM card, their website and in-store people enforce this rule. I've always had good luck calling their 1-800 number and playing dumb. At the very worst you can probably find an old or broken verizon phone for free/cheap and use that IMEI.
In Japan (except with some minor providers), your contract is linked to a concrete terminal. If you break your terminal, you must buy a new one from the company that is providing you the service.
Also, if you want to use iPhone, you must get a contract with Softbank.
Why? What do they offer that requires a contract? I'm not doubting you, but everything I can find online is poorly-translated pages that don't tell me much.
I think that they mean that you need a carrier-provided device, rather than bringing your own and popping in a SIM. As for the iPhone SoftBank thing: I'm assuming that they're the only Japanese carrier that provides the iPhone (Wikipedia's page on SoftBank says that starting with the iPhone 4S, it's available through KDDI as well, so maybe the previous commenter's information is out of date?)
AFAIK the only way to get a SoftBank SIM is with a SoftBank phone. I walked into a SoftBank store many years ago and tried to buy a SIM for my phone, they thought it was very cute.
As of the iPhone 5-ish the three major carriers (SoftBank, au, docomo) have all had the iPhone. They are uniformly terrible (onerous contract terms, expensive, low data caps, etc). Their greed has fueled an explosion of free wifi spots, and a resurgence of smaller carriers now that people are getting wise to their BS.
It's not a bad deduction but it is completely wrong. All major carriers in Japan sell iPhone, and all carriers (including many small ones) will sell you a sim card you can insert into your unlocked iPhone that you bought in Japan.
I bought a "visitor SIM" for 2200 yen for 14 days of unlimited data. 4400 yen a month is cheaper than an unlimited data plan in the US, so I don't see why that's not a viable option for residents. Sure, they tell you it's for visitors, but they don't check.
There are similar technical reasons that the U.S. and Japan ended up this way. In both countries carriers used to have different, incompatible mobile network technologies, so phones were naturally locked to a carrier. In Europe and elsewhere, everyone used GSM, then UMTS, then LTE. Today everyone is moving to LTE, but of course the carriers don't want to give up the power they got used to having.
Yeah, it's pretty bad. American telcos operate on their own terms and most people don't seem to care. It's one of those household jokes. Everyone knows they suck but everyone needs data and coverage, no viable competition in sight. I had to root my phone and add a flag to the com.android.prodivers.settings.db file. Now all tethering packets look like mobile packets. All this to get a feature I should have in the first place. I'm also probably breaking some contractual condition.
I'm optimistic that providers are moving away from the phone with data concept to the just data, bring us a phone concept and it can't happen soon enough. Less bundling, less bloat, less control of my device a telco has the better. There are still plenty of other real barriers, but it's a start.
I paid $50 for a Nokia phone from T-Mobile (bought with cash at a K-Mart! I didn't even know those were still around!) and have no contract, $40 a month, and tethering is included.
Likewise, my contract with Verizon was up and I was going month-to-month. I was paying about $130/mo. at the time. A friend of mine had a pre-paid phone and mentioned she needed to run to Walmart to get a "refill". Turns out she was paying $45/month for unlimited calling and texts and, I think, 2 GB of data (at "unlimited" speeds; it was rate-limited after that).
I was about to get the new iPhone anyways, so I went to Verizon and paid cash for it. I drove home, got on their web site and signed up for a $60/mo. pre-paid plan (unlimited calling and texting, and 3.5 GB of data) -- and I can tether now. My service is effectively the same and it's costing me half as much (and they even have a cheaper, $45/mo. plan).
I've been buying my phones outside a subsidized plan for about a decade now... up until recently, was on a cutrate plan at $100 for 3 months (2gb/month unrestricted, throttled after)... Switched to Verizon, partly because I wanted a new phone (Nexus 6p) and partly because I wanted better coverage on my road trips... in large parts of the country outside the cities, Verizon is the only coverage.
I'm paying over twice as much, but have had no issues with setting up wifi tethering... though I really need to run updates on my laptop before road trips, as I killed 9gb in one day (I don't use my personal laptop much).
All said though, I'm much happier with the better coverage, but miss the frugal bills I've had the past 6 years.
We got our AT&T bill down from $120/mo (for two phones) to between $45 and $62/mo (for three phones). When it was just me (I was the guinea pig testing before we ported my wife's phone over), my bill would regularly be $25-30. Ting isn't "unlimited", but rather has a fairly simple "use your phone and we'll bill you fairly" mindset. They also have a calculator where you can have them login to your existing carrier, pull the billing details, and estimate your Ting bill. I was initially uncomfortable with the pay-per-use nature, but the reality has been that it's way cheaper for us. If you are a road warrior salesperson who never uses wifi, it may not be as good for you.
Naturally, since it's pay-what-you-use, tethering is perfectly fine.
Ting does offer a referral bonus where I think you get $25 and I get $25. I'm not shilling for them nor stumping for referrals, but if you do care to use the referral link, it's https://z9prmb2f3t5.ting.com/
+1 for Ting, the only US cellular provider I haven't utterly detested as a customer. (Have used all the major ones.)
I am also saving hundreds of dollars per year (especially since I spend a lot of time outside the USA... If you don't use Ting during a month, the bill is like $7 or so.
I want to add that Cricket Wireless has great plan too with unlimited talk and text with 2.5GB data at $40 per month. And it has a group plan which is very good. If you have 5 people in a group, you will effectively pay just $20 a month for the same plan.
Another +1 for Ting. I signed up back in February or so and they've been just brilliant across multiple phones, including one situation where, due to a replacement for bogued hardware, the IMEI changed but the ICCID didn't - their website doesn't handle that very well, but their customer support took care of it via website chat in five minutes, which certainly counts as a win. I'm paying a third what I was with Sprint, and even buying the phone up front, I come out ahead; if you're looking for a better option, and Sprint has coverage where you are, Ting is definitely worth a look.
As a former Ting customer who was happy with their service, their prices aren't really that great. It's just that most people aren't heavy users, especially on minutes and texts, so your bill looks a lot better because you only have to pay for what you use. If you do use your phone a lot, your bill can quickly become worse than Verizon, etc.
Probably Net10, they are bigtime partners with Walmart (but could also be Boost Mobile or a couple others with similar plans).
I bought an unlocked MotoG and with Net10 I pay either $40 for 3GB or $50 for 5GB depending on my expected usage for the month (you can get bigger plans if you want at $10-for-2GB increments). If you go over you are not cut off, just restricted to 2G service (latency is horrible though). Tethering is technically against the rules but they don't really care, I've never gotten in trouble. You either get carried on T-Mobile or ATT.
I do ATT and it works fine - I am up north right now in Bumfuck MI (a cabin in the middle of a National Forest) and I have 4/5 bars of 4G signal. I think coverage worries are a thing of the past unless you are using one of those carriers that is specifically city-only. I get around and it's just never been a problem for me.
I buy refills through Callingmart. They don't charge all the extra fees that Net10 does directly (typically an extra $4/mo or so), they do 1% loyalty cashback for your next order, and they constantly run 3% off coupons (check retailmenot.com). So for a $50 refill that costs $54 though Net10's store I am at $46.50 out the door. They have refills for tons of carriers, worth checking out if you're monthly.
I said it below and got down voted but if you aren't unlocked and monthly you are getting screwed hard. My phone is rooted and has an unlocked bootloader, so I can run CyanogenMod (i.e. I can get security updates instead of being tied to the carrier's firmware), use the radio, tether, or anything else I want. I have absolutely zero ties binding me to my carrier - if next month some other carrier offers a better deal (or my current one tries to screw me) I just buy a $2 SIM-kit, swap and activate, and point my Google Voice number at the new SIM. Takes five minutes of work and nobody else even needs to know I changed carriers. The only downside is that you need to pay for a phone upfront instead of on a phone plan since nobody will finance an unlocked phone (hello startup idea).
Straight Talk, another MVNO, was actually her carrier. Her "refill" was via a pre-paid card she could purchase at Walmart. You can also do it online or over-the-phone with a credit card but she preferred to just walk into Walmart and buy a card with cash (she worked right by Walmart, anyways, and often shopped there so it was convenient for her).
I am using Project Fi. You get basic free calls and text within USA for $20. And for every GB it is $10. I set my account to $50 ( $20 + 3GB ). After every month whatever bandwidth I didn't use Google returns exact amount. So If I used only 1.2GB I will get my $18 back.
I only realised recently how good giffgaff's deals are. Their top package is £20 a month for unlimited everything (yes, even unlimited data, though speed is restricted after 6GB). On top of all that, you're using one of the top networks in the country (giffgaff runs on the O2 network) and all of their plans appear to be 1 month rolling contracts, so it's easy to cancel/switch plans. Wish I'd looked into them sooner.
Yes that's right. They cut costs compared to the main O2 deals by moves like not having the same type of dedicated customer service (you get support through their forums).
Not to defend large telcos, god knows i hate them myself, but one of the big differences between the US and Europe (besides us being drooling, knee-biting, mollified king-and-celebrity worshiping consumers with no comprehension of the meaning of our own rights) is geography. Historically, networks of all kinds, including energy and data have a longer gradient to reach rural areas which necessarily incur larger costs and more capital to roll out. I think this should be factored into it, but accounts for less than 50% of the difference. We're friendlier to monopolies ("Hey! They earned it! dur") in the U.S., too.
Case-in-point: You can get incredibly inexpensive service if you use a provider which only serves urban areas. People will complain that they took a road trip and didn't have service for 6 hours though.
This is one of the reasons why CDMA is/was much more popular is the US than elsewhere. CDMA requires fewer towers than GSM for equivalent geographical coverage. This is what allowed Verizon (CDMA) to advertise that they covered so much more of the United States than AT&T (GSM) did.
Kazakhstan is a huge country with an extremely low population density. I'm paying $20/year for 20GB/month mobile traffic (calls are not included, there are plans for that, but I don't call much). Coverage is not perfect, but all inhabited localities are covered and major roads too.
In the US the argument that "consumer protection is bad for business and therefore bad for the economy" has largely won. This leaves quasi-monopoly businesses able to bilk their customers without interference.
> Everyone knows they suck but everyone needs data and coverage, no viable competition in sight
How is "lack of competition" the problem? Pretty much everywhere you can get cellular coverage from four different major carriers, plus several MVNOs. If it was so easy to offer better service than AT&T/Verizon for less money, then Sprint or T-Mobile would do it and take over the market. Nothing is stopping them.
And it's not a Pepsi/Coke situation where a small number of oligopolists have an incentive to maintain the status quo because they're all benefiting from it. Sprint and T-Mobile have every incentive to compete--Sprint is hemorrhaging money and while T-Mobile is profitable, its profits don't justify its CAPEX.
Look at T-Mobile. Last year, they made $733 million in net income on $32 billion in revenue. Google, in comparison, made 20x the profit on just 2x the revenue. So with T-Mobile, there's not a lot of fat to cut. So why isn't everyone a T-Mobile customer?
People assign different weights to different features. Big red has by far the best network, especially if you travel, which is why they're fighting tooth and nail to avoid becoming dumb pipes. Big Bell lives somewhere in the middle but they charge a premium for sub-par service which is probably why I've never met someone who uses their service. TMo offers the best coverage+performance/price ratio but entirely because their network is okay and they're cheap. Google Fi makes it a little better since Sprint has more coverage but a worse network.
Willing to pay a premium for the best: Big Red
I honestly don't know: AT&T
Value is paramount: TMo
Tech enthusiast: Google Fi
Coverage and price is more important than quality: Sprint
I think a lot of it had to do with being locked into your carrier. It was expensive to leave because you had to pay that early cancellation fee and two of the carriers are CDMA, two are GSM so you potentially had to get another phone.
With the plan thing going away, there's more mobility in the phone market. The cost of good enough phones has gone down, providers can't lock their phones to their service anymore and there aren't so many coverage hold-outs where you HAD to get Verizon because Sprint didn't operate in your location.
The barriers to entry for a new telco are staggering, not as much as landline operators of course, but it's certainly not nominal. T-Mobile has historically been a phone of the urban population because that's where they get the most bang for their buck so it was difficult to become a household name.
Americans use their phones differently and I guess I'm in the minority by tethering often. I think if there was more diversity in the phone market, I wouldn't have to play these privacy tracking games, deal with tethering locked-down, misc phone crippling etc.
It's getting better, but slowly. If you don't use your phone like 90% of Americans use their phone, there might not be an American telco that serves your interests.
But did you actually read beyond the first few lines: 'On 2 February 2012, the Supreme Court of India ruled on a public interest litigation (PIL) related to the 2G spectrum scam. The court declared the allotment of spectrum "unconstitutional and arbitrary", cancelling the 122 licenses..'
In short the malpractice was arrested and licences of telcos cancelled.
My personal experience (India) has been good as far as the telco regulator is concerned. They take personal interest in ensuring that telcos behave as per requirements and mandates as far as consumers are concerned.
They are allowed, they used to exist. Very few people are willing to use the contracts. It never made much sense because people use prepaid and don't want to be stuck to one carrier.
I signed up with Ringplus. They sometimes give free tethering with their "free" service. So far, I have paid a one time top up on a plan that does not bill me and got tethering too, so I am happy with it. The price certainly was right.
That said, I could make similiar remarks about telecommunications companies still charging for phone service given that I do not pay monthly bills for it anymore, yet have it. If RingPlus' advertising and freemium business model turns out to be sustainable, then I ought to still have "free" service a few years from now.
To be fair, it was a lot more common to prevent tethering on plans where data was unlimited. Many plans now let you tether all you'd like up to your plan's standard data allowance.
That is a false premise, especially taking into account the parent comment didn't intend to use "third world country" in a malicious but in a factually correct way.
Don't they traffic shape and have much lower speeds, though? If everybody in a building used mobile data at the full speed, where would the telcos put the base stations? And since the frequency spectrum is shared, how many handsets can a 3G or 4G base station even accommodate at once at a full speed?
Unlimited data with tethering is a recipe for disaster; capped data plans usually do have tethering.
Okay, but at least on my phone (OnePlus One) the antenna to the FM radio is grounded. My guess is that they didn't think it was worth it to design an antenna or otherwise support the feature.
Am I wrong to think that other companies act the same? What else could be a reason to disable the FM radio in a phone? When you're designing a product, every feature costs money to develop and support, and in the race to the bottom nature of consumer electronics it might make sense to not support FM radio. Most of my friends (at least the normal ones) seem to prefer something like Pandora over FM for background music.
What's stopping someone from selling a phone that has a functional FM radio? I usually say the following jokingly, but this seems like a problem for the free market to fix.
> "What's stopping someone from selling a phone that has a functional FM radio?"
Nothing. They already exist. You could buy one today. I'm sure if you looked on Amazon or eBay you could find plenty of unlocked phones with working FM radios. Pair that with a SIM from your network of choice and you're done.
What's being discussed is about networks disabling the radio on contract phones.
this seems like a problem for the free market to fix.
The market for phones in the US is not free because they're generally tied to carriers, and the market for carriers is highly unfree because it's a natural monopoly with a weak government regulator.
This will be awesome. We will have a whole new generation with real life experience with intermodulation distortion, picket fence noise and host of other quirky radio anomalies.
Seems like this leaves a big unanswered question. Why haven't any manufacturers done this? Seems like it would give their product a big advantage.
In any case, as annoying as it may be that they don't offer free FM radio, I don't see why for-profit businesses should be under any obligation to do so.
What do you mean "why haven't any manufacturers done this?"
The whole point is that manufacturers have done this, the phone hardware and software generally support FM radio, for many models the (non-US) advertising material lists that feature - but the carriers have intentionally gone out of their way to disable it.
This used to be very big in South Korea at least, before (modern) smartphones took off. I suspect it's less compelling than just watching internet video now that we have that.
I understand it for most things, but it's frustrating for live sporting events when I can't stream it without paying (if it's available at all) to my smartphone while at the same time I'm literally being bombarded with the free TV signal for that event.
In Finland DVB-H was killed by the local MPAA equivalent. They demanded that everything transferred via DVB-H would need to be licensed separately - even though DVB-T and DVB-C were already licensed.
Pretty much no one paid for the licensing, thus there was no content. And as there was no content, no one bought the phones.
Then came LTE and now we can just stream stuff over the interwebs.
I remember the Droid X had a FM tuner in it. I thought that was pretty cool when I bought it, but then I never used it. When I bought it, I had forgotten that there is never anything good on FM... (though FM tuner was not the reason that I bought the phone)
In Europe, consuming radios via Internet is not such a big deal (fair use is usually at 50gb/month). But if you have the chance to have great local stations, listening to them via FM is draining almost no battery. And THAT is a big deal !
OK, old guy here. I bought a Note 4, one reason was that it had a FM tuner. The Verizon people told me it "wouldn't work on their network" which I took for BS. Hve been unable to find software to use it. Is 57 just too old to get it?
Is it Verizon-branded? Because they are bastards and will do whatever they want (that is, all the bad things, like disabling all the cool and useful features, and adding unremovable bloatware) on devices that go through their process.
ITT: Cars should support buggy whips, says buggy whip manufacturers.
And yes, I get the arguments that this is a feature already on the phone, carriers are assholes, etc., but I've had multiple phones with this feature, and found multiple people who have phones who have this feature, and who don't care. And this was on Virgin Mobile, which on a freedom scale of 1 to Richard Stallman is a solid Steve Ballmer.
It's less of a telco issue and more of a manufacturer issue. Yes, most phones have an FM receiver in them as part of the wifi+bluetooth chip. However, in most cases the FM antenna pin of that chip isn't connected to anything, so it just won't work. The manufacturer would need to connect this pin to the headphone socket. Once that's done, the OS would need to support the FM radio. Some manufacturers bake this into their ROMs, others don't. Telcos are the last step, and might choose to strip the FM radio app out of the OS if they have a cozy relationship with the manufacturer.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadAround here the only thing at all decent is NPR, and that content is all available via podcast with much better audio fidelity, and seeking.
Also in emergency type situations it could be helpful.
The reason is that the "FM radio chip" is usually not a separate IC that has to be designed in, but just a (tiny) part of an N-in-1 combo chip that provides WiFi, GPS, and BT, so all it needs is for support to be in the software to work. Here's one which has a FM transmitter too:
http://www.mediatek.com/en/products/connectivity/wifi/consum...
Since many of these relatively brandless smartphones are a direct copy of a reference design from the SoC manufacturer, designed to show off all the features, they automatically inherit those features and the companies who make them wouldn't spend extra effort just to remove functionality. The fact that the market for them is heavily feature-driven also means one less bullet point in the feature list is going to be noticed easily.
My Nokia N900 had one and I've missed it ever since - it could even display text via RDS!
You know, that's an amazingly depressing thought: how many other dead-simple technologies have we been prevented from using because of ingrained interests?
OTOH, Bluetooth is certainly a better idea for personal telephone calls.
SiriusXM satellite radio is the same way as FM broadcast radio with all the commercials. I pay an outrageous amount to them every month for service -- for my truck, car, motorcycle, and the Internet streaming "add-on" (I have a tabletop radio on a nightstand next to my bed) -- and get so annoyed by all the commercials.
I'm not sure how much they make off of me, as an individual subscriber, per month, from the advertisers but I would happily pay much more every month (probably another 50% or so) for a 100% commercial-free option -- and I'm sure that's gotta be way more than what they're getting from the advertisers for me.
I mostly drive my truck, which I just bought in August 2015. SiriusXM was free for 90 days. Before it expired, I received a "promo" deal in the mail and paid for a year or service at that time.
Likewise, I bought my car in June 2014. SiriusXM was free for 90 days and then I signed up for, I believe, a quarterly package. I, personally, have only driven my car twice in the last six months or so -- probably less than five times since I bought the truck. My girlfriend has a Jeep but she drives my car most of the time, so I keep that subscription active because she prefers the satellite radio over FM, Pandora/iTunes/etc. Otherwise, I would cancel service in the car.
I also have a package and receiver on my Harley. Due to the weather, I get to ride it perhaps half of the year. It's an inconvenience to call up and add it to my account in the spring and then remember to remove it as winter nears and the bike goes into the garage for months. Besides, we occasionally have nice days in the winter when I can ride and I want it to "just work".
Then, there's the Internet streaming service. I have the SiriusXM app on my iPhone (so I can play it via Bluetooth when in someone else's vehicle, etc.) and Roku and we have a "tabletop" receiver next to the bed. We often turn it on when going to bed, the girlfriend will listen to it while getting ready for work, etc.
In short, I do like the service. I'm probably paying them more than I should but I likely won't cancel it anytime soon. As I said above, though, I'd gladly pay them more for an "{ad|commercial}-free" version.
Turns out they're heavily regulated by the FCC. It all boils down to the requirement that you can't interfere with anyone else's reception. Any transmission strength that gives acceptable quality would do that. So they are artificially stunted.
It's possible that your N900 is exceeding legal signal strengths.
https://neo900.org/specs
I drive rentals a lot. Like, a lot. Across dozens of brands and models, it's never taken me more than a minute to pair my phone.
Also, the 3.5mm aux plug is even easier to use than tuning a radio to any frequency, and the quality is vastly better. It's a long time since I've seen a car without it.
I agree, I really like cars with the 3.5mm aux plug but the two cars I have most experience with (Hyundai i20 and a 2010 Falcon AU) don't have them.
Even the Nexus phones don't have FM radio, probably for the same reasons (Google makes money when you buy music through Google Play, or stream it via Google Play Music).
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-the-Google-Nexus-devices-have...
http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-smallest-tv-antenna/42558/
We can ignore the "without having to compromise" remark gizmag made. Every antenna makes some sort of compromise.
That said, I now know what I want to see in my next phone. OTA TV. :)
Ed: Here's an example of it being used. There's a little antenna plugged in the headphone port. Pretty neat trick.
https://youtu.be/hfhx4OLi_Q4?t=282
Most TV channels are on UHF and nearly all antennas are designed for UHF. They are able to get poor reception of the high VHF channels and no reception of the low VHF channels. The "world's smallest" TV antenna that I linked should have been designed for UHF too.
NAB is involved [2] in this latest heroic campaign for consumer choice too, of course, although you wouldn't know it to look at the website [3].
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/radio-riaa-manda...
[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/08/18
[2] http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-wide-consum...
[3] http://freeradioonmyphone.org/about/
Having radios everywhere is obviously always in the radio industry's best interests. Back in 2010 the music industry got involved because they were trying to wring extra performance rights fees out of radio, which the radio folks clearly were not interested in, but the proposed compromise was that music industry lobbyists would throw their weight behind the "radios everywhere" thing, and radio would presumably benefit enough from that to cover the new hefty performance fees.
The Performance Rights Act didn't go anywhere, looks like music industry tried again last year with the "Fair Play, Fair Pay" bill.
that's what they use in most of the cases. on my phone, the radio refuses to function until a headphone is plugged in.
Of course, headphones as antennas will stop working when headphones go USB-C or an Apple-specific connector.
Both FM and AM should require separate antennas in the phone, although maybe the one intended for cellular communications could be used for FM without failing to picture up anything at all. It would be surprising if someone could avoid a separate antenna for AM.
Try doing this in India and no consumer would touch your phone. Contracts are not allowed in India. I am mildly proud that third world country telcos are much more open compared to western ones
Also, their CEO is kind of a dick, and seems childish on Twitter after the whole EFF thing.
I've had Nexus and iPhone devices on multiple TMobile plans, never had any trouble tethering: just turn it on like normal for the OS.
The only thing I've had happen was I think I remember some years back, I was on a grandfathered unlimited plan from before smartphones and tethering were ubiquitous, they started new plans with unlimited data+tethering and if I tethered too much it'd redirect to a captive page saying "please don't" and throttle me pretty heavily to convince me to switch, but the Simple Choice plan I have now is actually cheaper than that plan was.
Root and manually add an iptables rule and you're good to go. Rather lame Google would intentionally cripple something on the client side.
Hi, I turned on my direct-from-Google Nexus 5's hotspot, connected my laptop, and posted this comment. T-Mobile's my provider, and I don't have any of their software on my phone. I also haven't taken any special steps to enable it (just the usual change in the settings menu). I'm curious which "hoops" you're referring to.
Also afaik T-Mobile officially states that only 100MB of tethering is included, but it seems that they haven't enforced this for some time now.
Also, their employees will lie about their credit check not being a hard pull on your credit report that harms your credit. The Internet has plenty of reports to the contrary. Having your credit run for a hotspot like they want to do is ridiculous. No MNVO ever required once from me.
That said, T-Mobile's network is fairly good here in NY. Their customer service and sales are horrible though. I am not sure if the others are much better as I have not interacted with them much. My first cell phone was on Virgin Mobile USA, which spared me from experiencing this nonsense until later in life.
B) The article isn't even about America, or American telcos.
A Telco blocking features of a phone, any features is like stealing from you. I buy an LG or Samsung for the features listed on the box or website and if I found a feature to be missing the box and phone will be promptly returned and I'd demand my money back, and contract canceled! It's just an unthinkable thing for a Telco to do.
$500 early termination fee, 8-12 weeks for a "partial refund" via cheque ;)
I understand and agree with the outrage you feel, but the status quo is powerful and slow to change. There are telcos that explicitly provide tethering in their plans as a standard feature, and bringing an outside device to operate with the telco is easier than it used to be, so maybe things are starting to shift.
They act like you need a whitelisted IMEI, but the network doesn't actually care. The tricky part is getting a SIM activated on their network.
The store managers pretend like they can't give/sell just a SIM. They're supposed to give them to you for free, but lie to sell you a handset. You can buy them from resellers who DGAF. They also pretend you need a whitelisted IMEI to activate the SIM card, their website and in-store people enforce this rule. I've always had good luck calling their 1-800 number and playing dumb. At the very worst you can probably find an old or broken verizon phone for free/cheap and use that IMEI.
I've been buying unlocked for the last 3 years, so I've been able to avoid this.
Also, if you want to use iPhone, you must get a contract with Softbank.
What do you mean?
>You must get a contract with SoftBank
Why? What do they offer that requires a contract? I'm not doubting you, but everything I can find online is poorly-translated pages that don't tell me much.
I'm optimistic that providers are moving away from the phone with data concept to the just data, bring us a phone concept and it can't happen soon enough. Less bundling, less bloat, less control of my device a telco has the better. There are still plenty of other real barriers, but it's a start.
The market might be (slowly) responding...
I was about to get the new iPhone anyways, so I went to Verizon and paid cash for it. I drove home, got on their web site and signed up for a $60/mo. pre-paid plan (unlimited calling and texting, and 3.5 GB of data) -- and I can tether now. My service is effectively the same and it's costing me half as much (and they even have a cheaper, $45/mo. plan).
I'm paying over twice as much, but have had no issues with setting up wifi tethering... though I really need to run updates on my laptop before road trips, as I killed 9gb in one day (I don't use my personal laptop much).
All said though, I'm much happier with the better coverage, but miss the frugal bills I've had the past 6 years.
We got our AT&T bill down from $120/mo (for two phones) to between $45 and $62/mo (for three phones). When it was just me (I was the guinea pig testing before we ported my wife's phone over), my bill would regularly be $25-30. Ting isn't "unlimited", but rather has a fairly simple "use your phone and we'll bill you fairly" mindset. They also have a calculator where you can have them login to your existing carrier, pull the billing details, and estimate your Ting bill. I was initially uncomfortable with the pay-per-use nature, but the reality has been that it's way cheaper for us. If you are a road warrior salesperson who never uses wifi, it may not be as good for you.
Naturally, since it's pay-what-you-use, tethering is perfectly fine.
Ting does offer a referral bonus where I think you get $25 and I get $25. I'm not shilling for them nor stumping for referrals, but if you do care to use the referral link, it's https://z9prmb2f3t5.ting.com/
I am also saving hundreds of dollars per year (especially since I spend a lot of time outside the USA... If you don't use Ting during a month, the bill is like $7 or so.
I bought an unlocked MotoG and with Net10 I pay either $40 for 3GB or $50 for 5GB depending on my expected usage for the month (you can get bigger plans if you want at $10-for-2GB increments). If you go over you are not cut off, just restricted to 2G service (latency is horrible though). Tethering is technically against the rules but they don't really care, I've never gotten in trouble. You either get carried on T-Mobile or ATT.
I do ATT and it works fine - I am up north right now in Bumfuck MI (a cabin in the middle of a National Forest) and I have 4/5 bars of 4G signal. I think coverage worries are a thing of the past unless you are using one of those carriers that is specifically city-only. I get around and it's just never been a problem for me.
I buy refills through Callingmart. They don't charge all the extra fees that Net10 does directly (typically an extra $4/mo or so), they do 1% loyalty cashback for your next order, and they constantly run 3% off coupons (check retailmenot.com). So for a $50 refill that costs $54 though Net10's store I am at $46.50 out the door. They have refills for tons of carriers, worth checking out if you're monthly.
I said it below and got down voted but if you aren't unlocked and monthly you are getting screwed hard. My phone is rooted and has an unlocked bootloader, so I can run CyanogenMod (i.e. I can get security updates instead of being tied to the carrier's firmware), use the radio, tether, or anything else I want. I have absolutely zero ties binding me to my carrier - if next month some other carrier offers a better deal (or my current one tries to screw me) I just buy a $2 SIM-kit, swap and activate, and point my Google Voice number at the new SIM. Takes five minutes of work and nobody else even needs to know I changed carriers. The only downside is that you need to pay for a phone upfront instead of on a phone plan since nobody will finance an unlocked phone (hello startup idea).
And ofcourse tethering is enabled.
https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans
I switched to their 2GB plan after Three announced their price increases.
https://www.idmobile.co.uk/shop/plans/sim-only
(The registered address of both companies is the same, if you'd like a quick verification of this.)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
eg not allowed at all on their unlimited data tarriff: https://www.giffgaff.com/support/calls-and-internet/unlimite...
Germany is one of the worst telecom markets in Europe, but you can get 2 GB of data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts for 12.99 € without contract.
In France you pay 19.99 € without contract for unlimited calls, unlimited SMS and MMS, and 50 GB.
The main difference is how the market is regulated. Better regulation leads to lower prices for consumer.
This is one of the reasons why CDMA is/was much more popular is the US than elsewhere. CDMA requires fewer towers than GSM for equivalent geographical coverage. This is what allowed Verizon (CDMA) to advertise that they covered so much more of the United States than AT&T (GSM) did.
How is "lack of competition" the problem? Pretty much everywhere you can get cellular coverage from four different major carriers, plus several MVNOs. If it was so easy to offer better service than AT&T/Verizon for less money, then Sprint or T-Mobile would do it and take over the market. Nothing is stopping them.
And it's not a Pepsi/Coke situation where a small number of oligopolists have an incentive to maintain the status quo because they're all benefiting from it. Sprint and T-Mobile have every incentive to compete--Sprint is hemorrhaging money and while T-Mobile is profitable, its profits don't justify its CAPEX.
Look at T-Mobile. Last year, they made $733 million in net income on $32 billion in revenue. Google, in comparison, made 20x the profit on just 2x the revenue. So with T-Mobile, there's not a lot of fat to cut. So why isn't everyone a T-Mobile customer?
Willing to pay a premium for the best: Big Red
I honestly don't know: AT&T
Value is paramount: TMo
Tech enthusiast: Google Fi
Coverage and price is more important than quality: Sprint
With the plan thing going away, there's more mobility in the phone market. The cost of good enough phones has gone down, providers can't lock their phones to their service anymore and there aren't so many coverage hold-outs where you HAD to get Verizon because Sprint didn't operate in your location.
The barriers to entry for a new telco are staggering, not as much as landline operators of course, but it's certainly not nominal. T-Mobile has historically been a phone of the urban population because that's where they get the most bang for their buck so it was difficult to become a household name.
Americans use their phones differently and I guess I'm in the minority by tethering often. I think if there was more diversity in the phone market, I wouldn't have to play these privacy tracking games, deal with tethering locked-down, misc phone crippling etc.
It's getting better, but slowly. If you don't use your phone like 90% of Americans use their phone, there might not be an American telco that serves your interests.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G_spectrum_scam
They are allowed, they used to exist. Very few people are willing to use the contracts. It never made much sense because people use prepaid and don't want to be stuck to one carrier.
That said, I could make similiar remarks about telecommunications companies still charging for phone service given that I do not pay monthly bills for it anymore, yet have it. If RingPlus' advertising and freemium business model turns out to be sustainable, then I ought to still have "free" service a few years from now.
Third world is not a politically correct phrase, developing world is a good compromise although not perfect still.
That is a false premise, especially taking into account the parent comment didn't intend to use "third world country" in a malicious but in a factually correct way.
I live in the U.S, I would never say third world country when talking to some one from another country in the developing world.
Unlimited data with tethering is a recipe for disaster; capped data plans usually do have tethering.
Am I wrong to think that other companies act the same? What else could be a reason to disable the FM radio in a phone? When you're designing a product, every feature costs money to develop and support, and in the race to the bottom nature of consumer electronics it might make sense to not support FM radio. Most of my friends (at least the normal ones) seem to prefer something like Pandora over FM for background music.
What's stopping someone from selling a phone that has a functional FM radio? I usually say the following jokingly, but this seems like a problem for the free market to fix.
Nothing. They already exist. You could buy one today. I'm sure if you looked on Amazon or eBay you could find plenty of unlocked phones with working FM radios. Pair that with a SIM from your network of choice and you're done.
What's being discussed is about networks disabling the radio on contract phones.
The market for phones in the US is not free because they're generally tied to carriers, and the market for carriers is highly unfree because it's a natural monopoly with a weak government regulator.
In any case, as annoying as it may be that they don't offer free FM radio, I don't see why for-profit businesses should be under any obligation to do so.
The whole point is that manufacturers have done this, the phone hardware and software generally support FM radio, for many models the (non-US) advertising material lists that feature - but the carriers have intentionally gone out of their way to disable it.
It's got a screen, audio, and at least one antenna. I'm no electrical engineer but surely that's something that's at least theoretically possible...
https://www.silicondust.com
Regular ATSC/DVB-T broadcasts do not cope well with a moving receiver.
Pretty much no one paid for the licensing, thus there was no content. And as there was no content, no one bought the phones.
Then came LTE and now we can just stream stuff over the interwebs.
And yes, I get the arguments that this is a feature already on the phone, carriers are assholes, etc., but I've had multiple phones with this feature, and found multiple people who have phones who have this feature, and who don't care. And this was on Virgin Mobile, which on a freedom scale of 1 to Richard Stallman is a solid Steve Ballmer.