Jamming wireless signals in South Africa

[Jan]

These past few hours have been crazy.

In addition to the minor announcements that came out of Zuma's State of the Nation address (thread for that here) and the absolute circus the opening became when our police force was used to eject the EFF, there was also a whole issue around cellphone signals being jammed.

I've done three articles for MyBroadband on the topic so far:

1. Alleged cellphone signal jamming at Zuma speech
2. How cellphone signal jamming works
3. This is who may jam cellular signals in South Africa

Some key points I thought are worth highlighting/discussing are that Icasa said in 2002 that no mobile phone jamming equipment would be licensed in South Africa, effectively rendering it illegal to use either "publicly or privately".

However, following last night's shenanigans, Icasa has come out with a new statement saying that the State Security Cluster may use jammers where relevant legislation permits.

There is only one scenario I can think where you would want the State to be able to jam cellphone signals, and that's to stop it from being used to detonate a bomb (or some other imminent terrorist threat).

That said, it would probably be faster (and safer) to just get the networks to turn off their coverage in a particular area that's been threatened (like we see in all the American cop series we watch).

[_Caboose_]

There is only one scenario I can think where you would want the State to be able to jam cellphone signals, and that's to stop it from being used to detonate a bomb (or some other imminent terrorist threat).

I would rather go for a jamming device in that situation, imagine waiting on hold for vodacom to jam the signal :/