FCC to Vote November 19 on Prison Cellphone Jamming Rules

US regulators will vote on November 19 on final rules that would, for the first time, allow prisons and jails to jam contraband cellphones. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced the vote at an event in Arkansas on October 28, joined by Senator Tom Cotton and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin for a roundtable with law enforcement officials.

The scale of the problem is measurable. A 2024 study found prison authorities recovered more than 25,000 cellphones in a single year. Two participating facilities each reported recovering more than 6,000 handsets. That works out to roughly 68 phones per day across the study, or about 16 per day at each of the two worst-affected sites.

What would the new rules change?

The Order, which Carr will circulate to fellow Commissioners on October 28, would permit — but not require — state and federal correctional facilities to deploy jamming systems. Inmates have used contraband phones to arrange hits, coordinate gang violence, abuse children and support criminal enterprises, according to the FCC. Despite a decade of countermeasures, the influx persists, and corrections officials have pressed for jamming authority as an additional tool.

The move follows congressional pressure rather than pure regulatory initiative. Senator Tom Cotton and Representative David Kustoff proposed key legislation, and a group of bipartisan state attorneys general has repeatedly flagged the need for stronger alternatives.

How would the licensing work?

Two licensing paths would be open to eligible entities, and both carry technical strings. Facilities pursuing either path must meet standards and testing requirements at two stages:

• Initial testing under an experimental license, to prove the jamming solution causes no harmful interference outside its designated area.
• Post-license testing at the facility itself, before any operational jamming begins.

Jamming would be confined to a Commission-authorized "jamming containment area" where wireless operation is prohibited. Interference outside that zone remains barred.

The process also builds in notice obligations. Carriers, FirstNet, public safety coordinators and 911 authorities would receive advance notice of on-site testing. Nearby communities would be notified before any deployment.

Why now?

The effort to stop contraband phones has spanned roughly ten years and multiple technologies, none of which solved the problem. The 25,000-plus annual recovery figure from 2024 gives the Commission its evidentiary baseline, and the two facilities reporting more than 6,000 recoveries each illustrate how concentrated the problem can be at individual sites. Chairman Carr framed the vote as a direct response to that record.

The permissive structure matters for practitioners. Facilities gain an option, not a mandate, so deployment pace will depend on state budgets, procurement cycles and the outcome of the experimental-license testing regime. The interference safeguards — containment areas, carrier notice, pre-operational testing — are the conditions operators and public safety agencies will watch most closely, since any spillover onto commercial or FirstNet spectrum would trigger enforcement attention.

If Commissioners approve the Order on November 19, correctional facilities could begin pursuing experimental licenses under the new framework, with the first on-site tests determining how quickly jamming reaches operational status.