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IP: One man's cell phone jams tens of thousands of calls
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 11:43:49 -0500
From: "Robert Raisch" <raisch () internautics com> To: "Dave Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu> One man's cell phone jams tens of thousands of calls Fox Market Wire - 7.27 p.m. ET (0027 GMT) January 15, 1999 CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. When the mysterious white car with tinted windows and a small satellite dish on top pulled up to Calvin Simpson's motor home, the retired engineer was puzzled. {snip} The men, engineers for GTE Wireless, had found their culprit. For 10 days, Simpson's cellular phone had been jamming cellular service for tens of thousands of customers in Florida's Citrus and Hernando counties. {snip} Engineers still aren't sure what caused the problem, but they think Simpson's phone was constantly transmitting signals to a "set-up channel'' on a cellular phone tower behind Crystal River's City Hall. The channel is supposed to take signals and relay them to their destinations. Simpson's phone, however, sent signals to the channel even when he wasn't trying to make a call. Whenever his phone was on, the constant signal prevented any cellular phone user from making a call via that tower. GTE Wireless spent days in Crystal River trying to figure out what was causing the outage before tracking the faulty signal to Simpson's cellular phone. They used the same technology cellular phone companies use to track stolen cell phones. Full Story: http://www.foxmarketwire.com/wires/0115/f_ap_0115_53.sml -- Rob Raisch, Internet Hired Gun <http://www.raisch.com/> and author of the run-away NY-Times best-seller: The Idiot's Guide to Chicken Soup for the Soul for Dummies in a Nutshell
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- IP: One man's cell phone jams tens of thousands of calls Dave Farber (Jan 16)