CTIA Expects South Carolina Cell Jamming Test to Go Ahead as Planned
A top CTIA official expressed outrage Thursday that the South Carolina Department of Corrections plans to go ahead Friday with a demonstration of cellphone jamming technology at a state prison. CTIA has called the test of technology provided by vendor CellAntenna a violation of federal law and asked the FCC to step in. Chris Guttman-McCabe, CTIA vice president, said companies rarely issue a news release to announce plans to “break the law.” State prison officials hope jamming equipment will keep inmates from using cellphones smuggled into their cells.
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“We live in a rule-of-law state,” Guttman-McCabe said during an FCBA wireless lunch on tower siting. “We don’t get to pick and choose what laws we want to honor and what we don’t. When a company comes out and says publicly in the press and invites members of government to participate with them to break the law, I think government should do something to prevent that law from being broken in advance.”
Guttman-McCabe told us CTIA probably lacks legal standing to seek an injunction to block the test. “There’s a need for someone in government to step forward to block it,” he said.
Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association, said on the same panel that the South Carolina test raises many questions. Questions include whether the jamming equipment could affect cellphone use by someone walking beside a jail. “I get a little bit nervous,” Fontes said. “What’s the fine line between a prison and a hospital, a prison and a movie theater, a prison and whoever else wished to jam wireless devices?”
Guttman-McCabe said prisons are rarely completely isolated from the rest of the world. He cited the example of jail next to the Courthouse Metro stop in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. “You step off Metro you're 200 yards from a jail,” he said. “You're also 200 yards in the exact same direction immediately below the jail from a sheriff’s office and also 200 yards in the exact same direction from a courthouse. You're also 200 yards in every direction from 15 different office buildings.”
Guttman-McCabe said he remains hopeful the FCC will act on a CTIA petition asking the agency to clarify federal authority over cell-tower siting and set deadlines for local governments to act on applications to build new wireless facilities. “We're very hopeful,” he said, though he acknowledged that the CTIA may have to wait for a new commission under the next chairman. “We've heard President- elect [Barack] Obama talk about broadband being important,” he said. “We just need help facilitating it. For us, the sooner the better. If we can get it done in the next two months, great. If we can’t, we'll continue to work with the new Democratic FCC… We just want the process to have a beginning and an end.”
Guttman-McCabe said the CTIA filed the petition partly because the FCC had approved and a federal court upheld a “shot clock” the agency imposed on local governments to act on video-franchising applications. “We thought if there can be a shot clock on that process clearly it makes sense to have a shot clock on this one,” he said.
Bill Hackett, a T-Mobile senior manager, said educating local governments about the need for towers and relieving fears is a huge job for the wireless industry. “We still do get a lot of [radio frequency] concerns, people concerned about towers too close to schools, people’s home.” People who oppose towers because of RF often bring in other objections, such as the visual impact. “A lot of the historic issues we face often start out as RF concerns and health concerns,” he said.