Call Jamming FNPRM Likely Just the Start of a Complicated Proceeding at FCC
Wireless carriers have traditionally opposed the jamming of wireless signals at correctional facilities and supported managed access systems, but with FCC commissioners set to approve on Tuesday a Further NPRM proposed by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the industry has had little to say in recent weeks (see 2509050055). Industry observers said the draft FNPRM is likely to be approved largely as proposed.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Few filings have been posted in docket 13-111 since the FNPRM circulated. State law enforcement and corrections officials, most in Republican-dominated states, have weighed in urging the FCC to approve the draft notice (see 2509240028).
Carriers may be “waiting to see what unfolds,” said Kristian Stout, innovation policy director for the International Center for Law & Economics. The current FCC has also been “very helpful on a number of fronts to clearing out old regulations that are inhibiting the market from moving forward,” Stout said. It might be “strategically wise to allow the FCC to move on this one if it feels it’s a priority.”
Cooley’s Robert McDowell said it may be too early “to tell which direction the FCC wants to go” in the proceeding. “Some potential thorny statutory questions lie ahead, so let's see what commenters say about that,” said McDowell, a former commissioner.
Five years ago, CTIA argued that allowing jamming would be “bad policy.” Managed access systems (MAS) and cell detection “provide options that can assist corrections officials in both large and small facilities,” the group said at the time (see 2009170053). In its most recent filing in the docket, last year, CTIA emphasized the work the industry has done to make MAS more effective “to stop communications from contraband devices while avoiding harmful spillover effects that block lawful communications.”
Recon Analytics’ Roger Enter said Monday he expects carriers to ultimately oppose a move to allow jamming. “When all you have is a hammer … every problem looks like a nail,” Entner said in an email. He said he understands why prisons need to get contraband phones under control, “but jammers don’t stop at the prison walls.”
If jamming is allowed, “what happens to the legitimate expectation of people living next to the jail to be able to call wireless 911 in an emergency?” Entner asked. Jammers “don’t differentiate between good and bad phones. They jam all phones.” Lawsuits are “inevitable” when 911 calls don’t go through “and someone dies because the signal got jammed because that was easier for prisons than to actually control what is coming in and out of prisons,” he said.
Jamming and detection “can help in specific settings, but they are never sufficient on their own,” emailed Ghislain d’Adesky, business development manager at Telio, which works with prison officials in more than 20 countries. “Our experience is that when prisons provide a robust legal alternative -- secure phone calls, messaging, video visitation -- many inmates with nothing to hide shift away from illegal phones,” she said.
In one of the only filings of note in the proceeding in recent weeks, NCIC Correctional Services supported jamming as “a cost-effective, administratively simple approach to address contraband phones in prisons and jails.” The company urged a few tweaks to the draft. “The creation of ‘dead zones’ within correctional facilities would permit smaller jails to restrict contraband device access where it is not cost-effective to install managed access systems,” NCIC said.