NECTEC invents a cheaper phone bomb jammer

Siwaruk Siwamogsatham

"Our jammers cost only Bt500,000 each while one of similar quality imported from other countries costs around Bt1 million. And prices of other high quality imported jammers are as high as Bt10 million," said Siwaruk Siwamogsatham, director of National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (NECTEC)'s National Security Technology and Innovation Laboratory, one of the device's inventors.

"All the parts used to create the jammer are sold in Thailand and the prices, of course, are cheaper than ones being sold aboard," he said. "Moreover, our team can adjust the equipment's attributes to meet users' need, such as rainproof and shockproof attributes."

The jammer called TBox 3.0 has been designed to jam five cellular frequencies including 800, 900, 1,800, 1,900 and 2,100 megahertz.

"Once the box is switched on, it sends a signal to jam the incoming cellular signal radius range, meaning insurgents can't use a mobile phone to trigger a bomb," Siwaruk said.

TBox 3.0 is the third version of TBox that has been developed for the past three years.

"The idea of creating the jammer came up after we had seen news reporting about a motorcycle bomb strike in one of those southernmost provinces in 2005," he added.

To date, soldiers in those provinces have used 40 jammers of the first TBox version; six jammers of the second version have been provided to the navy; and 88 jammers of the third version have been used for bomb recovery missions.

According to a military report, the jammers are being used for bomb recovery missions at least once a week. Fifty jammers have been used around 2,500 times a year.

Tbox was recently hailed as an  outstanding invention by the National Research Council of Thailand. The team of researchers will be presented the award on February 2 to mark Inventors' Day.

Earlier, it also got an honourable mention in the IT Princess Awards 2007.