Mobile jammers at prisons disrupt cellular services

LAHORE: Cellular services are adversely affected in the localities adjacent to high security prisons across Punjab, as mobile jammers have been installed by jail authorities across the province to curb mobile phone use within the jail premises.
There are 32 prisons/jails in the Punjab, mostly situated in the center of populous areas with considerable high-teledensity. These jails were established initially in the suburbs of the city but now increasing populations and residential housing societies are surrounding them.
To address the issue, a high level meeting is scheduled to be held on Monday (today) in Lahore, said an official of the Home Department, confirming the issue was taken up with the provincial government by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority through ministry of interior.
The meeting will be attended by representatives of PTA, Ministry of IT, National Radio and Telecom Corporation (NRTC), Frequency Allocation Board (FAB), CMOs officials, Punjab home departments and other government officials concerned, he added. According to the telecom industry official, as a result of these the quality of service of various cellular operators is being affected in several areas and customers are not getting service good quality 3G services offered by various cellular phone companies.
The Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) have taken up the issue with Pakistan Telecommunication Authority as their users of adjacent to jails vicinity are registering complaints of poor quality and interruption in the services.
“A large number of people living in the surrounding localities are unable to use phone as jammers apparently block their income and outgoing calls/SMS and internet speed,” said a PTA official. Even people suffer in the localities which are far from prison as the prison authorities illegally increased frequency of these mobile jammers, he said.
Besides, franchise and retail outlets of cellular phone companies of these areas are unable to continue business activities including balance upload and transfer of money through branchless banking services due to the jammers blocking. According to the SOPs, the deployment of mobile jammers is carried out by National Radio and Telecom Corporation. Usually, officials of the prison and jail enhanced the blocking intensity of the jammers that cause blockade of carriers’ telecom signals to big surrounding areas. The PTA official said all the companies taken the issue up with PTA’s zonal offices and headquarters as well, who tried their level best to mitigate impact of these jammers, but there has been no respite as jammers are operating at high frequencies, sidelining even the SOP issued by the PTA for installation of the latter, which is a serious source of concern for all CMOs.
An official of the FAB said, earlier, joint optimization was carried out by Frequency Allocation Board (FAB), National Radio and Telecom Corporation, PTA to ensure that neither cellular signals of beyond agreed level are available in the premises nor jammers’ signals go beyond the respective jail premises.
Installation of these was a success, whereas goals behind deployment were considerably achieved but later issues emerged after frequency of these jammers started influencing the 2G/3G cell sites around prisons.
The practice yielded good results for a brief period but, as of last month, the jammers in jails across the areas including Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Multan, Kasur, Sheikhupura and Bahawalpur started interfering with the licensed spectrum of cellular operators.
Now CMOs had expressed their issues with PTA but NRTC is not adhering even to the SOP, while the respective jail authorities show the same attitude in this regard.
In this regard, a team of technical experts from telecom industry comprising members from cellular operator met representatives from the Ministry of Interior to discuss the situation and brief them about their concerns. Sources in the telecom industry said the CMOs will present solutions to the issue which is to set jammers across the jails at a specific limit instead of putting it at high level. If the agreed frequency suggested by CMOs is implemented, the problems will be fixed. CMOs invested billions of rupees on deployment of 3G technology, if these hurdles are not removed immediately, the customers will not incline to the new technology.