Mobile telephones facilitate communications and enable economic growth and progress in terms of labor, production, education and health, among other areas. However, they are also used to perpetrate crime and mobile devices per se are subject to theft in thousands of cases. Mobile terminals have increasingly been used for criminal purposes by placing calls from prisons to ask for ransom.
Governments and the industry have taken steps to mitigate this activity, although the countries’ authorities and mobile carriers have held different views on the ways of blocking communications from jails. There is a variety of technology solutions for blocking radio signals in a specific area. All the available solutions are effective to a greater or lesser extent. However, none is completely harmless. Communications in prisons can be blocked fully, although this implies the risk of blocking communications that should be routed at no interference.