"It's true that brain dead FM engineers process the sound to within a inch of its life, but I wouldn't assume they're providing a cleaner feed to the HD transmitter."

It's not us FM engineers... It's the program directors who whine to the managers who force us to squeeze the life out of the audio. Because, after all, the loudest station on the dial always wins, right? NOT!

FWIW - HD radio is a solution looking for a problem.

IMHO, it seems that competition would become intense. Not only do the carriers have to compete purely based on their network coverage, reliability, and customer service, but they would want to be a few bucks cheaper on handsets than the next guy.

The only losers here may be the small carriers, ironically, as they would have poorer coverage, and fewer financial resources to subsidize handsets to compete with big red and big blue.