FCC to Vote November 19 on Letting Prisons Jam Contraband Cellphones
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, that the agency will vote on November 19 on rules that would allow prisons to use signal jamming. The announcement was made in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin was present.
Carr said thousands of contraband cellphones have been pouring into prisons, and that the devices have been used to order hits, coordinate violent gang activity, and aid criminal enterprises. The Verge reported that the proposed rules were to be circulated to commissioners on Wednesday ahead of the vote, which is scheduled for the agency's November 19 open meeting. CNYCentral carried the same announcement.
The legal starting point is restrictive. Radiofrequency (RF) jammers, which broadcast noise on cellular frequencies so handsets cannot connect to a tower, are generally banned under Section 333 of the Communications Act of 1934, with few exceptions. The FCC has stated that the Act broadly prohibits jamming devices, including cell phone jammers, and that the agency cannot waive that statutory prohibition. Jamming devices are not currently allowed in non-federal prisons, though signal jammers have already been permitted at some federal facilities. The proposal would, for the first time, allow prisons to jam contraband cellphones.
The rulemaking has been in progress since 2025. On September 5, 2025, the FCC released a plan for allowing prisons to jam contraband cellphones. The agency later approved a draft proposal on phone-jamming solutions for non-federal correctional facilities. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has been among the law enforcement officials pushing for allowing jamming technology in state prisons. Separately, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton introduced the Cellphone Jamming Reform Act of 2025 last year.
Under the proposal as described, a prison seeking a jamming license would face technical standards and testing requirements. Initial testing would take place under an experimental license, a short-term authorization for trialing new equipment. The goal of that testing is to show no harmful interference outside the designated geographic area. Jamming could occur only within a Commission-authorized jamming containment area, a defined zone where wireless device operation is prohibited, and it must not cause harmful interference beyond that boundary.
Notice requirements are also part of the draft. Carriers, FirstNet (the nationwide broadband network used by first responders), public safety coordinators and 911 authorities would receive advance notice of on-site jamming testing. Nearby communities would receive notice before any deployment. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez suggested beginning with a pilot program to test the implications of prison jamming for surrounding areas.
The broader context here is that the proposal asks the FCC to operate inside a statutory prohibition it has described as one it cannot waive. The rules themselves are built around containment, testing and notification, which suggests the agency sees the central technical question as whether a jamming footprint can be confined to the walls of a facility. Interference with public safety communications, including 911 and FirstNet, is the scenario the notice provisions are designed to address. Whether a containment boundary holds in practice, particularly near dense residential areas or in facilities with cellular infrastructure close to the perimeter, is the question the experimental-license phase would have to answer.
In my view, the most useful way to read the November 19 vote is as a test of the pilot framing Gomez proposed. Prison contraband is a real and documented operational problem, and the directives described here are narrower than a blanket authorization. Whether they hold up will depend on the measured interference outside each containment area, and on how the agencies that must receive advance notice respond to the testing data. If the containment design performs as specified, prison administrators would gain a licensed, bounded tool against devices that are already being used to direct violence, and the rules would give neighboring communities a defined process before deployment. The vote has not yet taken place, and the final text may differ from the draft circulated this week.
