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by Analemma_ 1286 days ago
In a sample size of maybe 10, every time I’ve seen one of those highway signs and tuned to the station, the quality was so bad I couldn’t make out any words and so got no useful information. If that’s the last bastion of AM usefulness, scrap it and give that spectrum to the wireless carriers. Frankly, for stuff like road closure information I’m a lot more likely to get that from Waze (delivered over a 5G connection) now anyway.
2 comments

The wireless carriers wouldn't be able to do anything with the AM broadcast band. It's in the MF range - not useful for cellular at all due to limited bandwidth, giant antenna requirements, and ionospheric bounce.
Low speed informational text message would be good use tho
Since the antenna would not be able to fit in anyone's pocket, the best placement for a medium wave text receiver would be in the car or a fixed location, like a home. And that brings you right back to the interference problem.
I don't think wireless carriers would want 1.2 MHz at that low of a frequency. They'd have the same issues with interference that broadcast stations have. The transmit antennas would take up acres of land (each element hundreds of feet long). Receiver antennas would also need to be large.

Also, very little data would fit in such a tiny spectrum window.