Law 21.720: carrying a jammer is now a crime

Since December 2024, Chile’s Law 21.720 has amended the General Telecommunications Law and expressly bans signal jammers, with prison time and fines for anyone who sells, carries or uses devices that cause interference with or interruption of wireless systems.

What changes for a site

• Carrying a jammer is now a crime. There is no need to wait for a completed theft.
• Detection produces the record that makes action possible. Knowing when and where there was an emission gives your team grounds to act.
• For an institution, there is a concrete legal offense to anchor the procedure to.

Penalties and exceptions

• Manufacturing, selling, buying, using, possessing or carrying a jammer without authorization: a prison sentence of 541 days to 3 years (presidio menor en su grado medio) and a fine of 50 to 100 UTM (a Chilean inflation-indexed monthly unit).
• Interrupting networks or services essential to public security, national defense or the State intelligence system, or the signals of ships, aircraft or control towers: a prison sentence of 5 to 10 years (presidio mayor en su grado mínimo) and a fine of 100 to 5,000 UTM.
• Who may use them: only institutions such as the police, the Armed Forces, Gendarmería (Chile’s prison service), the National Intelligence Agency and the National Cybersecurity Agency, plus the entities authorized by law or by the ministry in charge of security.