If all you're doing is calling a phone number, do you actually need a smartphone??That's like is a concept that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which might be called "telephonic broadcasting." The idea being that a "simple" cell phone signal could be picked up by any number of cell phones in any given cell with no marginal cost in terms of radio traffic. The cell is just a very low power, very short range "broadcast," as long as it is a one-way proposition where nobody talks back.
Recalling the furor over Jim McDermott's (sp) publishing of intercepted cell phone traffic between Newt Gingrich an a lieutenant, we know that the FCC bans such interception - but it demonstrates the technical feasibility of implementing vastly more audio channels than the FCC licenses in the AM and FM broadcast bands. That is the "magic" of cell technology - by which your digital cell radio seamlessly selects the local cell tower with which it can communicate best. That is a technology which was not dreamt of when the FCC was instituted.
Make no mistake, the FCC would be entirely uninterested in opening up a huge new set of "broadcast" channels - for the simple bureaucratic reason that that would reduce the importance of the FCC.
It isn't JUST about that, the corporations that monopolized radio (and eliminated local content/control) don't want to see their stations diminished in value by such competition.