Canada's Weatheradio being decommissioned.

If you're from the USA this is basically Canada's NOAA radio service. It's being taken down in a couple of weeks on March the 16th (2026).

Weatheradio - Canada.ca

I thought I'd post this here because there seem to be quite a few of our hybrid and EV driving friends here on the forum from Canada and I was wondering what your opinion is about this?

Personally, I'm sad to see the service go away. What is more, this could put some people's lives and property in jeopardy.

First, I'm pretty sure that there are places that the current Weatheradio service reaches that doesn't receive any cell service. And second, there are benefits from having redundant services because if one fails then you have the other.

This is why I refuse to buy an iPhone or a Samsung phone, because they don't offer FM radio. My current phone has an FM tuner and I always carry around earphones that work as an antenna. I also have emergency radios in our emergency kits and go bags. I do this because it already has happened to me on more than one occasion that all internet, cellular and "landline" services go out in the entire valley and the only way to know what's going and what to do in order to stay safe is to tune into the local radio stations, including a NOAA radio broadcast station.

But I also feel the handwriting is on the wall. People just don't care about over-the-air broadcasting anymore. Everyone is switching to the internet for all their news and entertainment. It's only a matter of time before OTA TV, AM and FM radio and services like Weatheradio and NOAA radio are things of the past. Hopefully the cellular services we use, which is starting to include satellite connectivity, end up being robust enough to keep us safe. I just don't think we're there yet. Therefore, I feel the decision to decommission Weatheradio this soon is a bad idea.

 

Okay then. I guess that other than a couple of Youtubers, nobody seems to care.

 

I also believe that satellite to phone is the next feature that will reach all phone users and be a gateway to emergency communications. Making cellular networks more robust is also in progress.

But there's the question of "are we there yet?" In my valley with over 10,000 in population there's only a single fiber-optic line that feeds all Internet, home phones and cellphones in the entire valley, unless you have satellite of course. There have been times not that long ago that that same fiber-optic line was out for days, leaving us with zero communication in the entire valley. You had to drive over 60 miles over steep mountain passes to reach the next zone that did have Internet (assuming it wasn't also affected by the outage).

We used to have an OTA TV repeater system that got it's signal via satellite. Ironically, a cellphone tower on the same frequency as the satellite was installed right next to the TV tower and killed all OTA TV for the whole valley. So they changed to an Internet connection to get TV to broadcast over the air here, but that's being taken down too in June.

Satellite is becoming a part of phones, but it's still in the early stages. Some, like Apple's system, can only text, and it's very difficult to send and receive messages. Imagine an emergency where cellular is down and authorities are trying to send out texts to everyone via that route. That would be a disaster.

Then there's Starlink and T-Mobile offering it for $15/mo in both Android and Apple phones. I signed up for it and it works pretty well. It only texts and uses data for Google Maps and texting apps (like Whatsapp) at the moment, but that data could really be used for emergency alerts. It even works ok from inside a vehicle or house, unlike the Apple satellite service that you got to be outside and point your phone in a certain direction and hold it there for a period of time. Emergency alerts over Starlink to phones would be, or perhaps already are, a real game changer.

But most phones out there do not support Starlink and it's an extra expense in anything except T-Mobile's highest tier phone plan. Until Starlink grade satellite connections in phones becomes as common as unlimited data plans are, I don't see it being adopted by enough people, especially when people like Musk are involved. Some people are even leaving T-Mobile in order to not have satellite service on their phones because they don't want to have anything to do with Musk.

I see a future where FM, AM and TV broadcasting are a thing if the past and satellite and cellular services take up the slack. But we aren't there yet, and taking down FM, AM and TV at the moment is a mistake.

 

The sad thing to me is that there are times I just want to cancel my Internet, cancel my cellphone service, and just go back to the time the Internet wasn't a distraction.

We're living in a zombie apocalypse. Everyone, including me, has this glass, metal and plastic growth in their dominant hand. And for what? For talking to my wife on the other side of the same living room? No. It has the opposite effect. It's for getting online and going onto forums to argue about stuff that doesn't even matter for hours and hours.

Ah! But you need the Internet because you can't bank, you can't watch TV, you can't shop, and you can't do hardly anything without it.

 

But just as a phone that has no paid plan can make 911 calls, do phones get emergency notifications without a paid phone plan and without Wi-Fi? And if not how do we fix that?