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Cringely: Wi-Fi in the Sky
Boiled Frog writes "In Cringely's latest article, he describes his plan to test a wi-fi connection between his house and his plane using two LinkSys 802.11g routers. He plans to experiment with various antennas to see which works the best."
Sorry Bob, someone beat you to it.
But i'd still be interested to see the results of a bi-directional test..
It isn't too hard to figure out:
1) There are in-plane phones that charge your out the ass to use them. Cell phones kind of bypass that. It isn't surprising that they don't allow cell phones in-flight.
2) I have read that cell companies say that the phones would confuse the cell network due to being able to "see" so many towers. I don't buy that as I have used my cell on top of a 250ft tower on top of a tall mountain well within the range of at least 10 cell towers. No problem as far as I could see.
3) When the terrorists took over the planes in 2001, passengers were using cell phones to make calls while the planes were going. The pilots were NOT professionals. They had enough training to steer them into buildings and that is about it. They didn't crash because of cell phones being used. Hmmmm.
You can bet that cell phones are not a danger to make planes crash. That isn't the reason they are banned. You can bet on that.