What is a Mobile Phone Jammer?

What causes a traffic jam? Too many vehicles moving along the same road, right? Also the reason for a traffic jam can be that there are other vehicles on the road which are blocking your path to speed.

Similarly, a cell phone jammer is a device that emits signals in the same frequency range that mobile phones use, effectively blocking their transmissions by creating strong interference. So if someone is in the range of a jammer, he will just lose his signal strength and accuse the service provider without knowing that there is a jammer which is responsible for the signal loss.

Why do we need mobile phone jammers?

There would be no need for jammers if everyone followed phone etiquettes. People who do not follow phone etiquettes like speaking slowly and moving away from other people while talking on the phone are inconveniencing others at banks, offices, public transport systems, hospitals etc. So if you are one of the people annoyed by mobile phone talkers, you can buy a pocket jammer. It can in effect kill the signal of the person speaking on his mobile phone while sitting next to you in the train. This will not prevent the other person from talking but will force him to move away from you, under the belief that the signal is bad at the place where you are sitting. This can be done with a flick of a button.

Although it would be a desirable solution for a lot of people, it can cause havoc to the business of the mobile phone service provider. Hence it is banned in most countries except for special zones like hospitals, military and government offices.

Cell phone jammers are available in multiple shapes depending upon their ‘power’ to block signals in a specific range. A small personal jammer may resemble a cell phone and have the capacity to block signals for around 50 – 100 feet. This is a good enough distance for a person to not get distracted by an ongoing cell phone banter. There are more powerful jammers which resemble networking equipments with wires, that have the capacity of blocking cell phone signals for a few miles. This can be useful around a Presidential motorcade, for example, to keep terrorists from detonating a bomb from miles away or even from outside the country. By wiring a cell phone to explosives the device can be triggered by simply placing a call to the phone, as was done in May 2002 by Palestinian militants in Tel Aviv when they targeted an Israeli fuel depot by rigging one of its fuel trucks.

Law enforcement also uses cell phone jammers in hostage situations to keep the suspect isolated, and in South America, banks use the devices to prevent robbers from tipping off outside accomplices to departing customers leaving with large withdrawals.

There are many businesses who would love to use jammers like restaurants, theaters, hospitals, libraries to name a few. The reason for the desire is to prevent the patrons from having to forcibly listen to the banter of a possibly-unaware-disturbance-creating-cell-phone-user.

Personal cell phone jammers start at about $250 (U.S.D.) and are widely available online despite their illegal status in most countries. The top manufacturers reportedly sell primarily to military and law enforcement but will sell the devices to anyone with the disclaimer that it is up to the buyer to make sure the device is legal in his or her country and that the buyer assumes all legal responsibility for buying, owning, or using the device.

What would happen if a jammers are made legal?

Obviously, the cell phone industry will run out of business, since although it is intrusive at times, there are marked benefits of cell phones as well. And if jammers are in use publicly, no matter what amount of infrastructure investment is made by the service provider, the end user will still not get a guaranteed good service.