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FCC to Allow Wireless Access on Planes
isd_glory writes "The FCC has unanimously voted to allow wireless internet connections on airplanes. If everything goes according to plans, airplanes might be offering passengers internet service by as soon as 2006. Furthermore, the FCC is also soliciting comments about the possibility of lifting the in-flight ban on cellphone use. While this could be new profit source for the cash-strapped airlines, it might also be a new way to annoy your neighbor sitting next to you."
it might also be a new way to annoy your nighbor sitting next to you.
This is exactly where it is going to go. This is going to be horrible having to listen to calls like this: "Dude, dude, dude......guess where I am? Hehehe, dude, I am in a plane he he whoooooaaaa dude" your breaking up there.....CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW??? HOW ABOUT NOW????!!!?. Yeah thats exactly what I want. If the airlines want to make people even more crazy in the air they will subject us to stuff like that. Now, if they are smart, they will create cell phone free zones so that everybody does not have to be subjected to the mindless banter that people inflict on others around them.
It might even be a more horrible experience than I had on a flight from Sydney to Australia a couple of months ago with a couple of ecstasy addled passengers in front of me who were mixing alcohol with their e's as well. Those guys would not shut up. Cell phones have the same effect on some folks. They appear to be oblivious to anybody else around them and start the most inane loud conversations obligatorily involving anybody within earshot. All I have to say is that a good investment in Bose noise canceling headsets have been one of the best investments ever and appear to possibly become a necessity when flying.
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WTF changed!? (other than the fat contracts I'm sure the carriers have been working out)
I mean, the flight attendants lose all sense of reality if you're caught using a cell phone. I've been on a couple of flights where the flight attendant took the passenger's cell phone after seeing them take a call.
So... what's changed to make it "safe" all of a sudden?
I think I know the perfect things the airlines could offer. LAN parties. You just bring a laptop (or they could loan you one on selected flights) and you play with the people on the plane with you. I can imagine such a thing taking off, actually. Or they could just offer Internet. *shrug*
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There are several technical reasons why cellphones are banned, don't forget. Interference with the instruments in the plane is one thing. The fact that cellphones thousands of feet in the air can "see" a whole bunch of cellphone towers at once poses a problem, too. To solve the problem, they'd probably have to have some sort of localized setup on the plane itself, which requires cooperation from the carriers (they are already arguing about how many carriers should be allowed to compete), which means cellphones on planes might happen when I'm too old to fly anyway. :D
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Just play counter-strike on the airplane in mid-flight. Crank up the volume, have the guns blaring away, then you hear "Hostage down! Hostage down!" I'm sure it will be appreciated.
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Because the cable trailing along behind the plane is unsightly and tends to exceed the 100m limit quite rapidly.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
"I got a network! Shit, out of range. I got a network! Shit, out of range. I got a network! Shit, out of range. Bugger."
Singapore Airlines for one...there are others.
;) (well, a civilian representative of the FAA anyways).
....I'll just say I'm looking forward to reading the public comments on that one.
I'm sure internet will be limited, at least initially, to first and business class. It might actually make it worth upgrading, especially on an international flight, so you could get some work done and collaborate in real time.
This could be good news for me in particular since I generally approve the structual engineering for mods like this for a living. Yes, I'm from the FAA and I'm here to help you
As for cellphones,
A goal is a dream with a deadline
First, I like the WiFi, that would be great. The only thing that worries me is that people will start using it for VOIP to get around any anti-cellphone regulations.
Second, the FAA has its own ban on cell phones in airplanes. So even if the FCC says it's OK (which, from a technological/interference point of view it is), the FAA can still keep it banned (like smoking is banned, for example) keeping us all sane in the air.
If the FAA doesn't save us, I suspect that portable cell-phone jammers will become VERY popular among frequent travelers. And how dangerous do you think THOSE unregulated things will be for pilots?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Lufthansa has about 80 planes with wifi already, they fly to destinations in the US and Germany..
In an effort to save /. a little disk space, could we all agree that Monday's
discussion has already flogged the "in-flight cellphone" horse to death? Yadda yadda "annoying yammering twits", yadda yadda "but I could call my spouse", yadda yadda "all just a conspiracy by the phone company"... Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
So let's concentrate on important things, like making WAGs about how much the wi-fi service will cost. And how there'll be annoying twits hogging the bandwidth downloading pr0n at 30K feet, and how useful it'll be to email your spouse to let him/her know the plane is crashing, yadda yadda yadda...
Oh, and most important - we'll need at least one thread about how this will be used by terrorists to coordinate their attacks by IM-ing each other. (No flight article is complete without a terrorist thread.) And another thread about how all the money needed to implement this would be better spent feeding starving squirrels in Bulgaria. Think about the squirrels!
(And yes, it has been a long day... :-)
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Everyone keeps freaking out about how annoying this can make plane rides. I don't see this being a problem, really... all this means is that airlines can regulate themselves when it comes to using cell phones on a plane. Maybe airlines will offer cell free flights, or provide "quiet sections" of the cabin where talking on your phone isn't allowed.
Really, if enough people hate being around people on their phones, the airlines themselves will (well, should) provide options for those people to have a more pleasant flight.
When I was working at (insert name of huge network equipment company) on their WiFi, we worked on phased-array SDMA, that stands for space division multiple access. The idea was that you could have a system with lots of nodes moving past a central point, at which was a 2D square conformal array of patch antennas. By varying the phase and amplitude of the signals to each patch antenna element, you could accurately track up to floor((2ln(n))? targets with acceptable crosstalk, where n is the number of patches on a side. This would work awesomely with a plane flying over a bunch of omnidirectional access points with a ventral mounted conformal antenna.
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Even though FCC has unanimously voted for cell phone usage on planes, it doesn't mean FAA will will approve it too. It might take years before FAA approves it.
Plus Verizon AirFone has a monopoly and good relations with FAA. What makes you think Verizon would let you do that? They don't want to lose their steady income. There is very small spectrum available for a re-transmitter on a plane. What makes you think Verizon is willing to give that up? You can't have Verizon's Airphone and cell phone working at the sametime, due to spectrum limitation.
Before you get too excited, there will be serious roaming charges even if FAA approves the cell phones. This is again due to the limited spectrum, and one large company monopolizing it.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I see this myth repeated often. People say that cell phones don't work in airplanes for all kinds of technical reasons.
But if you remember on 9/11, there were a whole bunch of cell phone calls that got through just fine. You don't hear of cell phone calls working on airplanes that often because as current law has it, they aren't allowed. But when people broke the rules in an emergency, they worked just fine.