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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Cell Phone Jammer
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Joel N. Weber II
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 115
From: Somerville, MA, USA
Registered: Dec 2005
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posted 06-13-2007 08:19 PM
Indeed, one issue is that it's very difficult to prevent an active jammer from leaking outside one's property. Different phones will fail at different signal strengths, and the signal strength tends to fall off as the signal goes through a greater distance of air. So if you calibrated your signal to block all cell phones within your building, you'd likely end up blocking some cell phones outside your building.
You might be able to control where your jamming goes by shielding your building well, but if you do that, you might have a perfectly good passive jammer anyway.
I don't think the FCC's prohibiting jamming is likely something that was inspired by the cell phone industry; I suspect the rules go back to a time long before cell phones were common.
I believe there was a case within the last year or so when MassPort, the organization that owns some of the major airports in Massachusetts, wanted to be able to shut down other parties' 802.11 networks so that they could charge high rates for their 802.11 networks, and the FCC said that MassPort didn't get to control that.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 06-19-2007 12:02 PM
Scott - your post is well thought-out, however the audience needs to be educated to leave the damn cellphones home. These days, texting is much more bothersome than talking. It's impossible to have somebody pacing the aisles 100% of the time looking for blinking lights. I've found kids with their shirts pulled over their heads, texting.
Be that as it may, it's unnecessary to have a cell phone in a theatre for the babysitter to call you. I have been alive 50 years and I've never once heard of a kid dying because the parents were in a movie theatre and couldn't be reached.
Our theatre for the past 76 years has had a phone in the office. If there's a problem, a kid or a babysitter can call us and we will find the parent. We have a doctor here in town who loves movies. He never brings his cellphone with him. If the hospital needs him, they call our office and we go get him. He hasn't lost a patient yet because of the one minute it takes us to get him to the phone.
Of the thousands of phone calls I've fielded in my 28 years in the business, I can count on one hand the calls that were true emergencies, and even then I can't really remember ever having one that truly couldn't have waited until the movie was over. More often than not, it's the kids fighting over the TV remote, or something equally stupid.
I realize a bigger city would have more people and thus more potential problems, but people did without cellphones for the first hundred years of the movie business and they're NOT NECESSARY NOW.
Maybe I would feel differently about this if I were a parent. But I do remember when I was a kid, my parents went out every now and then. They always told us where they'd be, and we were strictly instructed not to call them unless somebody was bleeding to death or something equally dire. I have four younger siblings, and I can't remember our babysitters ever having to call our parents about anything.
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Mark J. Marshall
Film God
Posts: 3188
From: New Castle, DE, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 06-20-2007 08:59 AM
I've seen cell phone jammers that only broadcast about 30 meters, and won't even penetrate glass. Those devices are perfect for theaters. Place them on the ceiling in the middle of the theater, and it would be good to go. I'm not sure how the FCC manages to claim jurisdiction over the broadcast airwaves in a privately owned room. This is the same puzzling phenomenon as the one where people say that it's illegal for you to receive a signal that comes into your house. If a satellite provider is beaming their signal into my home, and I manage to find a way to receive it in my home without their approval... how is that illegal? I know it is, but to me it doesn't make much sense. Of course in court, what makes sense to me doesn't matter much!
I agree that passive blocking works just as well, if not better because it blocks everything. But blocking everything passively is not the best option in case of an emergency. I would much rather have active jammers connected to the emergency fire control system so they can be programmed to be turned off in the event of an emergency. In our place, if the fire alarm goes off, all of the projectors stop. It would be just as easy to have the jammers shut down as well. You can't do that in a passive jamming environment.
Edit: Looks like Mark beat me by four minutes on that. Great minds think alike!
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 06-21-2007 05:37 AM
quote: Mark J. Marshall
I'm not sure how the FCC manages to claim jurisdiction over the broadcast airwaves in a privately owned room.
Firstly cellphones do not use "broadcast" airwaves, and secondly, they exert control by benefit of being granted power over all transmissions by your government.
The cellphone companies pay your government for the privilege of exclusive use of chunks of the frequency spectrum, and that exclusivity extends over a specified area. If you start up a service using those same frequencies (which is what an active jammer is) then you have trodden on the cellphone companies rights. Its not too dissimilar that you claim the privilege to watch a movie on your screen is granted by an admission fee.
As the old refrain says - use a faraday shield, and it all goes away. You could possibly use a jammer within a faraday sheild and not be transgressing any law, as long as you have no emissions outside the sheild, but if your sheild is that good then a jammer isn't necessary.
Or, get a Gavin. Gavin is an old guy who is one of our ushers, and he confiscates phones. He grabbed my son's phone one night, whilst I was in the booth, which I thought was hilarious, serve him right. The use of cellphones has decreased dramatically...
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