The New York Times > Business > Business Travel: The Cellphone That Doesn't Work at the Hotel
Are hotels illegally jamming cell phone signals? This is an interesting theory, unfortunately I don't travel enough to have an opinoin.
The doubts are not limited to guests. When a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey showed the number of calls made from hotel room phones had fallen by 40 percent in the last four years, the firm's lodging consultants wondered whether hotels were fighting back by investing in wireless jamming technology.
An investigation, however, turned up nothing. "It's possible that there are hotels using cellphone jammers," said Bjorn Hanson, a PricewaterhouseCoopers hotel analyst. "But we couldn't find them."
Then again, it is nearly impossible to prove that jamming technology is being used. "If you turn your phone on and it says 'no service,' then that's the only hint that you're being jammed," said Barry Zellen, editor of Technologyinnovator.com, a Web site that covers wireless security issues. "If you're in an area that has good coverage and you pull into a hotel driveway, and suddenly there's a dead zone, then you can probably speculate that there's something unnatural going on."
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the Federal Communications Commission, which could easily sniff out a blocker with its direction-finding equipment, has never issued a fine for the use of a cellphone jammer, according to an agency spokesman.
Not everyone sees that as proof that the devices are not in use. "The F.C.C. rule prohibiting cellphone jammers is unenforced," said Howard Melamed, the chief executive of the CellAntenna Corporation, a cellular-communications technology company in Coral Springs, Fla.
At the same time, consumer complaints to the F.C.C. about telecommunications service quality, a catch-all category that includes possible cellular-blocking devices, busy signals and roaming service, surged to 704 in the fourth quarter of last year, the latest period for which numbers were available, from 450 in the first quarter.
"If you do the math, if you connect the dots, it's obvious that these cellphone jammers are catching on," said Mr. Zellen of Technologyinnovator. "Especially in the hotel industry."
hmm.....
Are hotels illegally jamming cell phone signals? This is an interesting theory, unfortunately I don't travel enough to have an opinoin.
The doubts are not limited to guests. When a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey showed the number of calls made from hotel room phones had fallen by 40 percent in the last four years, the firm's lodging consultants wondered whether hotels were fighting back by investing in wireless jamming technology.
An investigation, however, turned up nothing. "It's possible that there are hotels using cellphone jammers," said Bjorn Hanson, a PricewaterhouseCoopers hotel analyst. "But we couldn't find them."
Then again, it is nearly impossible to prove that jamming technology is being used. "If you turn your phone on and it says 'no service,' then that's the only hint that you're being jammed," said Barry Zellen, editor of Technologyinnovator.com, a Web site that covers wireless security issues. "If you're in an area that has good coverage and you pull into a hotel driveway, and suddenly there's a dead zone, then you can probably speculate that there's something unnatural going on."
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the Federal Communications Commission, which could easily sniff out a blocker with its direction-finding equipment, has never issued a fine for the use of a cellphone jammer, according to an agency spokesman.
Not everyone sees that as proof that the devices are not in use. "The F.C.C. rule prohibiting cellphone jammers is unenforced," said Howard Melamed, the chief executive of the CellAntenna Corporation, a cellular-communications technology company in Coral Springs, Fla.
At the same time, consumer complaints to the F.C.C. about telecommunications service quality, a catch-all category that includes possible cellular-blocking devices, busy signals and roaming service, surged to 704 in the fourth quarter of last year, the latest period for which numbers were available, from 450 in the first quarter.
"If you do the math, if you connect the dots, it's obvious that these cellphone jammers are catching on," said Mr. Zellen of Technologyinnovator. "Especially in the hotel industry."
hmm.....
posted by Champion at 1:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home