Says It Can’t
APPLE has responded to FCC Commissioner AJIT PAI’s call YESTERDAY (NET NEWS 9/28) that urged APPLE to activate the FM chips that he claimed are in iPHONES in the name of public safety. TECHCRUNCH reports, “The recent HURRICANES HARVEY, IRMA, and MARIA were the hook for the reasoning. The only problem? APPLE hasn’t even included FM radio chips in iPHONES since the iPHONE 6s.”
The company told TECHCRUNCH, “APPLE cares deeply about the safety of our users, especially during times of crisis, and that’s why we have engineered modern safety solutions into our products. Users can dial emergency services and access Medical ID card information directly from the Lock Screen, and we enable government emergency notifications, ranging from Weather Advisories to AMBER alerts. iPHONE 7 and iPHONE 8 models do not have FM radio chips in them, nor do they have antennas designed to support FM signals, so it is not possible to enable FM reception in these products.”
The NAB weighed in, with EVP/Communications DENNIS WHARTON commenting, “Since 2012, NAB has commissioned quarterly ‘tear down’ reports from ABI Research on a wide variety of Smartphones to discover their capabilities. ABI’s analysis reveals that every APPLE iPHONE built during that time, including the iPHONE 7, has a chipset that includes support for FM radio. Apple also continues to sell an iPHONE 6S with an FM chip that is not activated, and there are nearly 100 million iPHONES in the marketplace with a deactivated FM chip. Like FCC Chairman PAI, we encourage APPLE to activate this feature on their future handsets so Americans can have access to lifesaving information during emergency situations, something that many local radio stations provide. We welcome the opportunity to work with APPLE to make that happen.”
This Article Was Originally Posted at www.allaccess.com