Cellphone jamming device

The headline in a recent American online newspaper read: "Churches are installing cell phone jammers." Apparently, newspaper and TV reporters who were attending church services in the USA noticed that they could not call their editors from church halls. When they asked the priest why their cell phones never worked at the church, during religious, funeral and wedding services, he told them special Israeli-made cell phone jammers the size of paperback books had been tucked quietly among paintings and statues of the saints along the church walls.

Welcome to the new world of cell phone jamming, and I for one applaud this new way of controlling our runaway technology. If used properly, these cell phone jammers can stop people from using noisy cell phones – the ringing tones and the talking – in movie theaters and concert halls in Japan and in schools and city halls and anywhere... even trains and buses. Even on the subways.

As one newspaper editorial noted recently, "The jarring din of ringing cell phones is increasingly being thwarted – from religious sanctuaries to India's parliament to Tokyo theaters and commuter trains – by devices originally developed to help military security forces avert eavesdropping and thwart phone-triggered bombings."

According to news reports, the Indian parliament had jammers installed after politicians ignored requests to turn off their cell phones and legislative sessions were constantly interrupted. In Italy and in Taiwan, universities started using the blockers after discovering that cell phone-savvy teenagers were cheating on exams by sending text messages or taking pictures of tests, according to news reports. And four churches in California began using the devices, from Tel Aviv-based Netline Communications Technologies Ltd., after an insurance salesman imported them as a personal favor for a priest, news reports said.

Purchased for about 200,000 yen each, the cell phone jammers, invented by Israeli engineers, can be turned on by remote control and emit low-level radio frequencies that thwart cell phone signals within a 100-foot radius. I hope they are used in all public places in Japan, soon, too.

I am sick and tired of rude people using their cell phones at inappropriate times. There is a time, a place and the correct occasion to use a cell phone – what Japanese like to call the T.P.O. concept (time, place, occasion) – and we all need to learn this, too. In the meantime, these cell phone jammers are fantastic. I want to buy one now.

Users get a "no service" or "signal not available" message on their cell phones when they try to use their cell phones in a room or hall that has a jammer fighting against their use. It’s a good idea, yet there are some problems. The private use of cell phone blockers is illegal in the United States and most Western countries. It is also illegal in most places in Japan at the moment. But the tide is turning.

For example, Japan now allows public places such as theaters and concert halls to install jammers, provided they obtain a government-issued license. And recently, France approved a decision to let cinemas, concert halls and theaters install them – as long as provisions are in place so emergency calls can still be made. If there is a fire or an earthquake, the cell phone jammers will stop functioning and calls can go out.

According to a recent CNN story, officials at Netline in Israel, which sold its first jammer in 1998, say they are selling thousands of jammers a year and have expanded their business throughout the world. I can't wait for the jammers to arrive en masse everywhere -- Japan, too. Hurry! The Israelis are also being joined by other companies overseas.

Tokyo-based Medic sells thousands of its Wave Wall jammers and Tokyo subway commuters can buy mobile jammers to shut up chatty train passengers, even though their use is illegal. In Scotland, Electron Electrical Engineering Services has been importing Taiwan-made cell phone blockers. It's happening already in France. According to news reports, mobile phone signals will be jammed in French cinemas and theaters to prevent the devices disturbing the audience.

The president of the National Federation of French Cinema has said that cell phone jamming devices will transform the experience of going to the cinema. "This will permit people to watch the film, and only the film," he told French radio in a recent interview. I don’t know if audiences in Japan will warm up to this novel idea, but count me already converted!