Prison Dept. asks jammer installing agency to address mobile network issues faced by people from Mangaluru prison jammers

The Prison and Correctional Services Department has asked Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL), which has installed advanced mobile phone jammers at the Mangaluru District Prison, to address network issues faced by people near the prison. It has also been asked to resolve the availability of mobile signals inside the prison.

In a recent letter addressed to TCI chief general manager in New Delhi, the Deputy Inspector-General (DIG), Prison and Correctional Services, Southern Range, K.C. Divyashree, has quoted the finding of a report of the joint monitoring exercise. This exercise was carried out by Wireless Monitoring Station (WMS), Mangaluru, in coordination with telecom service providers, TCIL, prison authorities, to examine interference in telecom signals in public areas owing to the installation of jammers in the prison.

Ms. Divyashree asked TCIL to take corrective action at the earliest and submit a compliance report to the office of the Mangaluru District Prison Superintendent urgently.

In the letter dated November 26 to the Prisons DIG, Deepak Kumar Pant, the engineer (Mon) in the Department of Telecom’s WMS headquartered in New Delhi, said the report has noted that all IMT and Wi-Fi bands were highly suppressed on the prison premises with jammers strength of approximately -70dBm. Further, suppression of the IMT bands (which covers signals of BSNL, Jio, Airtel and other services providers) and the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band was detected from prison entrance up to nearly 900 metres, with jammer signal strength of around -80dBm. Beyond 900 metres and up to 2.5 km, jammer signals were detectable, though weak, at about -100 dBm.

The jammer signals were extending significantly beyond the intended coverage area. The officer asked the Prisons Department to get the technical parameters of jammers reassessed and optimised, including the output power and the height/orientation of jammer antennas. The department has to ensure that jammer signal remained strictly confined within district prison premises so that signals do not affect telecom services provided to people in areas surrounding the prison, the WMS officer stated.

For long people around the prison have been facing network issues because of jammers. Recently the Mangaluru Bar Association filed a writ petition before the Karnataka High Court on the problem.