Daily Lobo columnist
Cell phones — everyone and their dog seems to have one now, and they just love to go off at the wrong time and in the wrong places.
Classrooms, movie theaters, restaurants, libraries — no place is safe from the wireless menace. While I was at the Grand Canyon during spring break, a guy’s cell phone started ringing.
Just the other day, I read about what sounds like the most sensible, useful and desirable gizmo of the decade: cell phone jammers. First commercially available in 1998, several models made by various companies can silence any area from the size of a room to entire buildings. They are already immensely popular in countries such as Japan and India.
The device is simple, based on ages-old radio jamming technology. Any cell phone within its area is unable to connect to cellular stations, so they think they are out of range. Anyone gabbing on the phone when they enter the range would be cut off.
The first question I asked is, if these devices have been available for almost three years now, why aren’t they being used everywhere? What’s taking everyone so long to buy and install them?
Well, it turns out a movement is gathering momentum in the United States to prevent the jammers from being used.
When they first came out, the FCC issued a statement reminding everyone that, according to a 1934 law, devices that block radio communication are illegal. Anyone caught using one faces huge fines and jail time. Cellular phone companies support the FCC’s enforcement of this law and are lobbying hard to prevent anyone from changing it.
However, support for the legalization of cell phone jammers is growing rapidly. Large corporations want to keep cell phones from interrupting meetings. Museums, concert halls and movie theaters are eager to shut up their phone-call receiving patrons. Universities should be the next to speak out: hardly a class goes by without at least one cell phone ringing.
The saddest thing about this technology is that it is needed at all. Don’t people have any concept of peace and quiet anymore? Why does someone have to be told to turn off their cell phone when they enter a movie theater?
Even worse are the people who not only let their cell phones ring anywhere and everywhere, but they insist on answering it at once and talking as loudly as they can.
The entire cell phone craze is emblematic of some peoples’ lack of respect for others. They don’t bother to think about how they are affecting the people around them. True, often it can be excused as carelessness, but letting people off the hook that way lost its appeal after the 10,000th five-tone song rang out to announce that so-and-so is so cool since they have a cell phone and are popular enough to get calls on it.
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Your cell phone should not interrupt a good movie. If you absolutely must receive phone calls, put the phone on vibrating mode or something.
The only legitimate concern about this technology is whether doctors and other on-call personnel have an actual need to be available on a moment’s notice. It would suck to be dying in the emergency room because the head surgeon is at a movie theater that is blocking the phone. But how hard would it be to reserve a few frequencies for professionals like that and still block the rest?
If cell phone jammers ever become legal, I will eagerly await the next generation of jammers — the portable kind. Imagine the bliss — and humor — of being a walking cone of silence. Stick a VCR-sized jammer and a battery in your backpack and wherever you go, cell phones are cut off from their service providers. If the current trend of cell phone abuse continues to escalate, it won’t be long before those of us who refuse to be chained on a cellular leash learn to fight back.
End the ringing!
