way to pick up cell frequencies on handheld scanner?
way to pick up cell frequencies on handheld scanner?
does anyone know of a way i can pick up cell frequencies on a handheld scanner? are there descramblers available?
Best answer:
No. cell phone scrambling and transmission schemes are beyond hand held scanners these days. descramblers do exist but are limited to law enforcement.
Please note, listening to cell phone calls on a scanner is not just a little against the law, it is very much against the law. In a federal sort of way…. back away from this idea
Tags: cell, frequencies, handheld, pick, Scanner
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2 Comments for way to pick up cell frequencies on handheld scanner?
1. Geoff S | November 29th, 2005 at 2:10 am
It’s not that cellular phones are scrambled, but because their signal is digital spread spectrum that’s the biggest problem. Most scanners are only built to receive analog signals only. In some very rural areas, analog is still somewhat commonplace. In a metro area, you don’t hear them much anymore unless someone has an old phone or one that is having a hard time picking up the digital signal.
Listening to cell phones is somewhat illegal in the US but since this website is worldwide, we cannot say that it is illegal everywhere. It most certainly is not illegal in Canada and scanners there do not block out that frequency range. Some scanners can be modified to unblock the cell frequency range but for those that cannot, there are block downconverters, transverters or frequency dividers that take the cell frequency range and convert it to a frequency your scanner can pick up.
2. megaris | November 29th, 2005 at 2:45 am
Analog cell phone in the old 896 MHz band can be listened to by a scanner produced before it was illegal to do so. The problem is there isn’t much analog cell traffic anymore, and it’s illegal.
Digital cells phones can not be easliy monitored, but it is possible.
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