EMF Shielding paint

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm not sure there's a legal right to access your personal phone on the basis of emergency situations.

That said, the FCC rules allow PASSIVE methods of cell phone reduction.. room-sized Faraday cages, paint (?), etc. They do NOT allow anything active, such as the powered jammers you can commonly find on sites like Ebay. Their reasoning is not so much that you have no right to restrict such signals within your building, but that you may not be able to corral the jammer to within the boundaries of your property. Affecting a cell signal outside your building or within a neighboring business or structure would be examples of such violations.

While not common, the FCC has gone after people who use active signal jammers.

Law enforcement is not bound to these restrictions.

I guess it depends a lot on your jurisdiction and interpretation of all kinds of local rules and regulations. The local variation of the FCC also forbids active blocking (essentially you're broadcasting on somebody else's licensed spectrum, that alone is illegal), but does not have any regulations against building large (wannabe) faraday cages on property you own.

But... if you're providing a venue that hosts a lot of people (and I'm not sure what the legal definition of "a lot" is. ), you're required to make sure that emergency services can communicate within your premises AND that people within your premises CAN communicate with emergency services. For your average cinema, this usually has no real technical consequences, but larger venues like sports arenas, etc., have to work with local emergency services to make sure they can communicate within your premises. This may even include installing local repeating equipment and to make sure that mobile coverage is available as a backup for those emergency services (Tetra around here).

If they found out that you painted the premises in stuff that actively prevents this kind of communication, let's say, that might not... reflect good on you, especially if there ever would be an incident.

[Lyle Romer]

If you could get the cell phone carriers to cooperate you could install a DAS (distributed antenna system) in the building with RRUs that are configured to block everything except emergency calls. By providing a stronger signal from the DAS than from outside, the phones will connect to it instead of a normal cell. An antenna in each auditorium would allow a signal that is actually low power to be strong inside that auditorium but the bleed to outside would be very minimal and the signal available outside form the normal cells would be stronger.

I don't think it would be worth the cost even if you could get the carriers to cooperate but it should technically work. I see most movies either in IMAX or Dolby Cinema or late in the run at off times. With the former, I think the price makes it that most people actually watch the movie. With the latter, there are so few people in the auditorium that I'm either in front of, or far from anybody with a screen lit up.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Unless you pay them an ungodly amount of money, the carriers will never cooperate with this, as you're essentially crippling their services.

[Jack Ondracek]

But... if you're providing a venue that hosts a lot of people (and I'm not sure what the legal definition of "a lot" is. ), you're required to make sure that emergency services can communicate within your premises AND that people within your premises CAN communicate with emergency services.

In Seattle, our NFL football stadium can be configured to hold upwards of 72,000 people, likely putting a huge load on cellphone and restroom infrastructure (incidental, unintended pun). For major events, I have seen cases where a carrier has brought in portable equipment to boost whatever capacity already exists there. However, I haven't seen any information that suggests this is anything but a PR or customer service effort.

[Ryan Gallagher]

In Seattle, our NFL football stadium can be configured to hold upwards of 72,000 people, likely putting a huge load on cellphone and restroom infrastructure (incidental, unintended pun). For major events, I have seen cases where a carrier has brought in portable equipment to boost whatever capacity already exists there. However, I haven't seen any information that suggests this is anything but a PR or customer service effort.

I think those "boosting" endeavors are relatively econmoical for those huge event organizers, if not free... no carrier wants to be known as the one that doesn't work at the superbowl or at coachella.

[Lyle Romer]

In Seattle, our NFL football stadium can be configured to hold upwards of 72,000 people, likely putting a huge load on cellphone and restroom infrastructure (incidental, unintended pun). For major events, I have seen cases where a carrier has brought in portable equipment to boost whatever capacity already exists there. However, I haven't seen any information that suggests this is anything but a PR or customer service effort.

It is for customer service. The network has priority levels (known as QCI-QoS) that are assigned to handsets. Usually this determines what priority you are given during crowded network conditions. Premium plans are get higher priority (lower QCI). Emergency calls get assigned QCI1 and are prioritized over everything else so an overloaded network won't prevent emergency calls from working. The portable equipment is purely so that customers don't get unusable service and then get pissed off and switch to another carrier.