CellAntenna CEO Featured in Wired Magazine

On paper, it’s a no-brainer: Prisoners have mobile phones they are using to run gangs, call friends, and intimidate witnesses. Tech companies have the equipment to jam the phones by flooding the airwaves, and prisons want to use them. But the 1930s law setting up the nation’s telecommunications bureaucracy makes such jamming illegal.

That drives Howard Melamed, the CEO of CellAntenna, crazy. Witnesses are dying and gangs are flourishing because Congress has yet to put the Safe Prison’s Act bill on President Obama’s desk, Melamed argues. His company, which mostly sells tech to expand cell coverage inside buildings, also does some business in jammers. And over the last seven years, he’s become one of the most public faces of the campaign to rid prisons of rogue cell phones.

“Criminals behind bars are doing what they do best which is break the law,” Melamed said. “People are being killed by criminals using cell phones in prisons to arrange hits on witnesses.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/prison-mobile-phone-debate-jammed-up-in-the-system

CellAntenna Combats Threat of Cell Phones in Prisons and Schools

New CJAM™ Cell Phone Threat Scan Service Arms Authorities Against Contraband Cell Phones in Correctional Facilities and Schools

CellAntenna Corporation is helping to combat the use of contraband cell phones in correctional facilities and schools. The company today unveiled its new CJAM™ Cell Phone Threat Scan (CTS) service, an important new offering that builds on the company’s years of leadership in enhancing or denying cellular signals. CJAM-CTS helps to stop crimes by prisoners and brings integrity back into the classroom. It gives prison and school administrators the ability to assess the extent of illegal and unauthorized cellular activity, and take steps to eliminate it from their environment.

CJAM-CTS takes the guesswork out of understanding the scope of unsanctioned or prohibited activities within high risk facilities. The service consists of a detailed site evaluation, RF spectrum analysis, cell phone detection and threat modeling, scenario planning and development of a migration strategy for correctional facilities, schools or any other high risk environment that needs protection against threats caused by cell phones.

“Finally there is a vaccine against the pandemic of cell phones in schools and behind prison walls,” said Howard Melamed, CEO of CellAntenna Corporation . “The CJAM-CTS allows facility and administration directors at institutions of all kinds to understand the threats that cell phones pose, and develop a strategic plan for combating them head on.”

CJAM-CTS proactively places valuable information into the hands of budget planners and decision makers. Performing the evaluation prevents wasteful spending on needless systems in cases where cell phones are proven not to be a threat. With this information, administrators can accurately plan and budget for preventative measures as well as deploy solutions, such as CellAntenna’s CJAM-CPC, cell phone controlling, and once the legislation allowing jamming in prisons is passed, CJAM-NF jamming solutions. CJAM-CTS is currently available in the U.S. and will be available in Europe in Q2 2010.

Press Release: Cellular Carriers Need to Surrender Revenue From Illegal Cell Phones Found in Prisons

Cellular Carriers Need to Surrender Revenue From Illegal Cell Phones Found in Prisons, Says CEO of CellAntenna Corporation

Las Vegas, NV/ April 1, 2009 – At the CTIA exhibition in Las Vegas, attendee Howard Melamed CEO of CellAntenna Corporation, a company that sells solutions for mobile phone signal problems and produces jamming equipment for prisons, is demanding that cell phone service providers surrender to department of correction authorities money earned from illegal cell phones found in prisons. The money would pay for the extra guards and equipment needed to tackle the growing epidemic of inmates using cell phones in prisons. Currently, illegal cell phones smuggled into prisons are the foremost problem facing correctional officials.

“The cellular providers through the CTIA say they sympathize and support law enforcement in their fight against illegal cell phones in prisons but lobby our government to deny law enforcement access to jamming equipment,” said Howard Melamed, President and CEO of CellAntenna. “As long as they oppose providing law enforcement the authority to jam illegal cell phones, they should voluntarily turn over any revenue made from illegal cell phones to them. No one should profit from criminals.”


Under the CellAntenna proposal a correctional facility that finds a cell phone used by an inmate can order the carrier associated with that cell phone to turn over all income earned from the illegal cell phone. Millions of dollars in revenue that the carriers are making would fund the cost of the searches and other less effective equipment that CTIA wants the prison authorities to use.

“Taxpayers need to know that it is costing our state and local governments millions of dollars for our prison authorities to search for cell phones,” continued Melamed. “CTIA representing the cellular service providers is standing in the way of law enforcement officers by denying them access to 100% effective low cost jamming equipment. The least they can do is pay for additional enforcement and security to assist prisons in tracking elusive cell phones.”

CellAntenna’s CJAM equipment is the only known way of jamming cell phone signals in a prison without affecting the surrounding neighborhood and the public safety radios. The company has been leading a nationwide fight to allow state and local law enforcement officials the authority to use cell phone jamming equipment that is currently not allowed under federal law.

About CellAntenna Corporation
Headquartered in Coral Springs, Florida, and offices in England and Poland, CellAntenna Corporation provides packaged, custom, and even rapid deployment cellular repeater systems for residential, commercial and government use. The company’s new products provide communication during disasters and where signal enhancement is required for saving lives. CellAntenna is involved in the limiting of cellular communication in prisons and in areas of high security. In addition, CellAntenna works on new and innovative applications for its systems and develops new, cutting-edge technologies.

For more information, please visit: www.cellantenna.com.

For Immediate Release
Media Contact: David E. Johnson, Strategic Vision, LLC
Ph: (404) 880-0098