Cellular technology forces phone etiquette

SAN FRANCISCO - One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was "blabbing away" into her phone.

"She was using the word like all the time. She sounded like a valley girl," said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that turned off the chatterer's cellphone transmission and any others in a 30-foot radius.

"She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end," he said.

As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half of a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.

The technology is not new, but overseas exporters of jammers, which are illegal in the United States, say demand is rising and they are sending hundreds of them a month into the US, prompting scrutiny from federal regulators and new concern from the cellphone industry. The buyers include owners of cafés and hair salons, hoteliers, theater operators, and increasingly, commuters on public transportation.

The development is creating a battle for control of the airspace within earshot. Insensitive talkers impose their racket on the defenseless, while jammers punish not just the offender, but also more discreet chatterers.

"The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. The jamming technology works by sending out a radio signal so powerful that phones are overwhelmed and cannot communicate with cell towers. The range varies from several feet to several yards, and the devices cost from $50 to several hundred dollars.

The Federal Communications Commission says people who use cellphone jammers could be fined up to $11,000 for a first offense.

Investigators from the FCC and Verizon Wireless visited an upscale restaurant in Maryland over the last year, the restaurant owner said. The owner, who declined to be named, said he bought a powerful jammer for $1,000 because he was tired of his employees focusing on their phones rather than customers.

The owner said the FCC investigator hung around for a week, using special equipment designed to detect jammers. But the owner had turned his off.

The Verizon investigator was similarly unsuccessful. "He went to everyone in town and gave them his number and said if they were having trouble, they should call him right away," the owner said. He said he has since stopped using the jammer.

Of course, it would be harder to detect the use of smaller battery-operated jammers like those used by disgruntled commuters. An FCC spokesman, Clyde Ensslin, declined to comment on the issue or the case in Maryland.

Cellphone carriers pay tens of billions of dollars to lease frequencies from the government with an understanding that others will not interfere with their signals.