Mobile operator Globe Telecom has intensified efforts to address the sale of illegal repeaters or signal boosters, which causes network interference that results in mobile phone subscribers to experience dropped calls, garbled lines, and weak signal.
Recently, the company?s campaign to address signal interference has been expanded to include the operation of high-intensity radio frequency identification (RFID), a wireless non-contact use of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects. For instance, a RFID tag attached to an automobile during production can be used to track its progress through the assembly line.
The Ayala-owned telco launched the campaign against signal interference in 2011 following mounting incidence of signal interference cases based on a report made by the company?s network monitoring group, which indicated the use of repeaters.
High incidence of interference had been noted particularly in the metropolitan Manila area.
?This should serve as a warning to those who have resorted to selling these illegal equipment that Globe Telecom, in close coordination with authorities concerned, will remain relentless in pursuing retailers peddling these illegal equipment,? said Froilan Castelo, head of corporate and legal services group at Globe.
He emphasized that the company will also be relentless in its campaign against operators of high-intensity RFIDs.
The company has so far uncovered and resolved 15 cases involving the use and sale of illegal repeaters or signal boosters following concerted efforts by the company and police authorities to tackle the issue.
Incidents of interference usually indicate the use of repeaters as such devices are not coordinated with other telecommunications infrastructure of the mobile network. In recent years, numerous incidence of interference had been noted particularly in the metropolitan Manila area.
Illegal repeaters come in the form of indoor or outdoor antennas and wireless adapters which boost network coverage and signal by hogging bandwidth from a legitimate network infrastructure.
