Yesterday (Tuesday) announced a preliminary arrangement with American radio industry representatives that will enable customers to listen to local FM radio stations on their mobile phones. This is the first time a U.S. wireless carrier will offer the ability to directly access local FM radio on their phones. Consumers currently can listen to radio on their smart phones but only by streaming the station over the Internet.

The new service will be delivered through the NextRadio tuner application that will be available later this year.

Other applications will eventually follow.

Only certain Android and Windows phones will be able to use the service.