Noble has been sitting on a commercial concept for jamming cell phone transmissions sent or received by drivers by blocking the cell phone from receiving a signal from a nearby cell phone tower. So far, Trinity Noble can only market the product to federal government fleets, which are not governed by FCC regulations, or outside the country. Opponents, such as CTIA’s Walls, say such products are unable to discriminately jam one cell phone without “bleeding” outside the driver compartment and affecting other cell phones in the same vehicle or those in other vehicles sharing the roadway. Depending on the carrier, cell phones operate on either the 800 MHz or 1,900 MHz


range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Cell phone transmissions often change frequen- cies depending on what cell tower is being pinged at any given time, especially in a vehicle that’s traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city. So the objec- tive of pinpointing a specific cell phone is problematic to say the least. Mike McQuade, director of technology for Zonar Systems, says it’s impossible. “You’d have to build a jammer that would be, in theory, only enough to disrupt the


phone call in the vehicle and not in an adjacent vehicle,” he explains. “What if someone in an adjacent vehicle is trying to call 911 because they’re having a heart attack? Te school district is going to bear the liability for that or the school bus contractor.” But, according to Trinity Noble, such a technology is not only possible but proven. Te


company demonstrated in a video posted on the Internet that a back-seat passenger could carry on a phone conversation in a vehicle equipped with the company’s Guardian Angel Vehicle Platform that jams cell phone signals only in the driver compartment. When the passenger hands the phone to the driver, the call suddenly drops. A low-powered antenna installed either above the driver compartment or beneath the dash board shines like a flashlight, sending specific, pinpointed interference directly at the driver to tempo- rarily disable any cell phone in that area. But in doing so, Chalmers claims, no other cell phones are affected, only those in the driver compartment. And the signal only emits only long enough to prevent the driver’s phone from connecting. Trinity Noble explains the technology as working similar to dropping a pebble in a


lake. Te biggest ripples in the water occur closest to the point of impact and get weak- er as they move farther away. Te same goes with a low-powered jamming signal. It gets weaker and weaker the more distance it must travel. Ten, according to Trinity Noble, the vehicles themselves, both the one the signal is emanating from and others on the road, present additional physical barriers.


❝ Any violation of the integrity of airwaves can


be potentially disastrous in terms of emergency communications or other vital communications. Tat’s why interference is illegal.❞


— John Walls, CTIA But before products like Trinity Noble’s Guardian Angel could become available for


the general public, the FCC would first need to de-regulate it. At this writing, the FCC had yet to formally respond to Trinity Noble. Yet, the company admits that the solution is about 95 percent effective, meaning 5


percent of the time the blocking signal could potentially bleed out of a vehicle such as a school bus and affect other motorists. Last year, NTIA measured the emission of jamming signals in prisons and concluded that, “no measurable signal power was observed outside the jamming zone in the Federal LMR and GPS bands of 162-174 MHz, 406-420 MHz, 1164-1188 MHz, 1215-1240 MHz, and 1559-1610 MHz.” However, “analysis of the in-band (cellular and PCS) potential for harmful interference, if any, of the jammer emissions that were observed outside the jamming zone was beyond the scope of this report.”


www.stnonline.com 27 ELIMINATES driver TRAINING


I


I


I


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60