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Yesterday afternoon, a NYC area college classmate sent me a link to a post entitled “.Wild Night at Philharmonic After Phone Interruption” from the WQXR Blog.

Last night, in one of the quietest parts of the final movement of a gorgeous New York Philharmonic performance of Mahler's Ninth, a cell phone started ringing ... and ringing, and ringing, and ringing. Alan Gilbert, who was on the podium in Avery Fisher Hall, glared in the direction of the phone, but it kept right on going. Then, the music got louder, and we all assumed that whoever owned the phone had done something about it. But minutes later, when the music got softer again the phone was still going (an iPhone marimba ringtone, which sounds like this):

So Gilbert stopped the performance. He then turned around and indicated that the phone should be turned off. It continued. The conductor then said to the phone’s owner, who was sitting in the front, “You have a phone... Fine, we’ll wait.” And we did, with audience members standing up, pointing in the direction of the offender, and shouting things like “Throw him out!” When the phone was finally silenced, Gilbert turned to the audience to apologize.

As of the posting of this item here, the WQXR Blog had 159 comments on this event - not many praising the cellular industry. One of the comments (#322191) stated,

“It's about time someone took a stand on cellphone protocol. What is so hard about turning it off when requested at a concert. I'm surprised no one has invented a way to check for all cellphones turned on. BRAVO Mr. Gilbert!!!!! I applaud your actions!”

The picture at the top of this post is from yesterday’s NBC Nightly News which did a piece on the event. But the incident has gone viral on the Internet! The Google search at right shows “About 1,440,000 results” on the incident - although a few of those are actually unrelated due to quirks of searching on Google.

On December 27th, your blogger posted “Some Possible New Year's Resolutions for the Cellular Industry” which included “Social harmony and cell phone use” as item #2. This built on a February 2010 post entitled “Cellphones and Interpersonal Friction”. The 2/10 post, for example, described the Japanese “Manners Mode” built into every cell phone sold in Japan that makes it easy and uniform to disable ring tones - hit the # key! This was not a Japanese government mandate, rather a voluntary standard of the Japanese cell phone industry. Since basically the same suppliers market cell phones in Japan as in the US, one would think that it would be possible here also.

The cell phone industry is united against legalizing jamming, but seems unable to do anything about antisocial cell phone usage that inevitably leads to interest by concert halls and restaurants in cellular jamming. As previously stated here, French national law explicitly permits cellular jamming in concert halls. While jamming in such urban locations inevitably will cause other problems and is thus a bad idea (as opposed to jamming in isolated maximum security prisons where the geometry is very different), there seems to have been little interest in the cellular industry in alternative approaches to minimize the antisocial aspects of cell phone use.

The cell phone industry is usually a positive contributor to US society and the US economy. But it continues to have some blind spots as outlined in the previous New Year's Resolutions post here. Maybe it should address them? Maybe FCC leadership should politely point out these issues from time to time and mention the possible impact of neglect?

I have asked CTIA to comment on the “Mahler incident” and will promptly post any reply.

UPDATE



As you can see from the above YouTube video from a concert in Slovakia, the Mahler/marimba incident was not unique. We patiently await comment from the cellular industry about these incidents and what they are doing to decrease the incidence rate. We know the US cellular industry hates all jamming, any other ideas?

Tags: cellphones and harmony

”In recent years, the number of websites offering “cell jammers” or similar devices designed to block communications and create a “quiet zone” in vehicles, schools, theaters, restaurants, and other places has increased substantially. While these devices are marketed under different names, such as signal blockers, GPS jammers, or text stoppers, they have the same purpose. We remind and warn consumers that it is a violation of federal law to use a cell jammer or similar devices that intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications such as cell phones, police radar, GPS, and Wi-Fi. Despite some marketers’ claims, consumers cannot legally use jammers within the United States, nor can retailers lawfully sell them.”

The above text and poster appeared on the FCC website last week as part of a multimedia offensive against illegal jammers. This offensive included an “Enforcement Advisory for Users”, an “Enforcement Advisory for Retailers and Manufacturers”, a news release, a web page on jammer enforcement, a blog on jammer enforcement, and even a Twitter feed on jammer enforcement!

Readers may recall that FCC foot dragging on enforcement of existing jammer rules and laws has been a recurring theme here and the subject of a recent FCBA talk by your blogger. (By contrast, your blogger disagrees with mainstream thinking within the cellular industry on whether the FCC could authorize limited jamming in prisons and on the meaning of Section 333 of the Communications Act.)

The EB “Jammer Enforcement” lists 68 enforcement actions against jammer since 10/04 - impressive at first look. However, a little analysis shows what is really happening here. Only one of these involved a fine (“NAL” in FCC jargon). That involved the appropriately named Phonejammer.com . In this case FCC issues a citation to the company on May 22, 2008 and issued the NAL on April 20, 2010 - 698 days later! It is unclear if Phonejammer.com ever paid the NAL or just morphed into another corporate identity.

The only other fines on the list going back to 2004 are also telling. They both involve Rocky Mountain Radar, a manufacturer of police radar jammers. The 8/14/07 Forfeiture Order has this explanation:

On January 31, 2007, the Spectrum Enforcement Division issued a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture ("NAL") in the amount of $25,000 to RMR. RMR has not filed a response to the NAL. Based on the information before us, we affirm this forfeiture.

Thus RMR did not even bother responding to FCC/EB! I suspect other jammer sellers will get the message here. A review of the RMR website seems to indicate that similar products are still being sold and they are still selling manuals for the models listed in the citation.

Thus not withstanding the new tweets and blog posts, there is nothing here that would really scare a firm intent upon selling either cell phone or GPS jammers. More puzzling than the FCC/EB inaction on the jamming issue is why CTIA and NAB condone the ineffectual enforcement. CTIA seems more concerns about keeping strictly regulated jamming out of maximum security prisons in rural areas where they could save lives than in keeping wantonly illegal jammers out of the market.

What is needed in jammer enforcement is not tweets about noncredible enforcement, rather some real enforcement! Let me repeat my call from the January FCBA talk:

• Incumbent spectrum users need to work together to advocate an effective compliance/enforcement program at FCC

• Recommend major trade groups form a compliance/enforcement advocacy consortium

“I believe that transparency is best achieved through the creation and publication of clear rules. However, for the regulatory regime to be successful, these rules must also be strictly enforced. Based on personal experience, I know that the U.S. regulatory model has only been successful when the FCC has enforced its rules vigorously. Failure to enforce rules sends the inappropriate signal that companies may engage in anticompetitive behavior or other unlawful conduct with impunity.” -- Remarks of Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy, Market Reform: A Tool for Achieving Universal Access Panel, ITU Global Symposium for Regulators. Geneva, Switzerland, December 8, 2003

Under current legislation, enforcement is an integral part of the FCC’s job. But it is a lot more fun creating new services and issuing licenses than it is penalizing people for antisocial actions. But as Comm. Abernathy said above during her tenure at FCC, the two go hand in hand.

Thus it is interesting to note the current list of Items on Circulation. There are now 32 items on circulation on the 8th Floor - a major decrease over the historic level! Of the 19 items that have been on circulation for more than 3 months, 8 appear to be enforcement related. These include 3 from the June-September 2008 period that have now spent almost 2 years on the 8th Floor without resolution. The list of all items on circulation more than 3 months is below:

So on today, the 6 month anniversary of our enforcement complaint being on the circulation list, we will not complain about that. But we ask what is served by having these other matters pending for such a long period. Note that this date shown below is only the date that the agenda item reached the 8th Floor. Each issue probably was pending for a long time before it ever got to that high level.