Slashdot Mirror
FCC Says No to Mobile Phones on Airplane
GayBliss writes "CNN is reporting that the FCC has decided to keep a rule in place that would ban mobile phone usage on airplanes. The FAA has a similar ban, but for different reasons. 'In an order released Tuesday, the agency noted that "insufficient technical information" was available on whether airborne cell phone calls would jam networks below. [...]Unlike the Federal Aviation Administration, which bans the use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices for fear they will interfere with navigational and communications systems, the FCC's concern is interference with other cell phone signals on the ground.'"
I've commented before about some of the hassles of travel lately (and some of the possible solutions), and all I have to say about the FCC maintaining the ban of cell phones on planes is thank you!. Aside from the "insufficient technical information" statement, this ruling is going to prevent someone from having violence done to them because of their inane constant droning to any and all within earshot. I once had the displeasure of sitting on a plane on the tarmac for two hours while our flight was delayed and the pilot allowed everyone to use their cell phones. It was torture as most folks were not talking on their cell phones to arrange transportation or take care of business, but they were talking (loudly) about everything and nothing and forcing those around them to have to listen! Even worse, people began trying to speak over one another and the volume gradually increased until there was an amazing din of people calling their friends to say "Hey! Hey! Betcha can't guess where I'm calling you from! An airplane! Ha ha ha ha, yeah and on my own cell phone even!". It was a horrible forced invasion of personal space and ever since then I had been hoping that the FCC would not allow this to become a common occurrence.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), this might give the MPAA ideas about courtesy in theaters...
Insufficient technical information exists to say that they do interfere with ground signals or even the navigation and communications systems used to justify the FAA's ban.
So why the ban? Erring on the side of caution? Gimme a break. There's gotta be another reason that nobody's talking about.
My blog
"I'm sick and tired, of these muthaf**king phones, on these muchaf**king planes!" The sequil comes out this August!
The original generic sig.
I really don't want to be stuck inches away from someone talking way too loud for several hours anyway.
Business travel is stressful enough the way it is and being "out of touch" from the office may be the best part of the trip. If they allow cell phones on airplanes that means I will be expected to work while I am on the plane as well. Get 20 people on a plane doing that and it is going to be really annoying to everyone else.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
assuming the technical reasons are even valid. How about banning cell phones in the air as a safety issue? Rapidly deteriorating service in the air, smaller seats, little bits of terrible food if at all, lost luggage, delays, rude employees, rude travelers, overbooked flights and then someone wants the ability to chat on their phone for the entirety of the flight. Can you say air rage?
for fear they will interfere with navigational and communications systems
for fear they will interfere
fear
It's afraid...
so why not just use the wired phones that are already installed on the plane?
The per-minute cost is approximately infinity billion dollars.
.. I cannot tell you how elated I am to hear this news.
Nothing amuses me more than the high-end muscle-man salesman that strolls through an airport terminal with a bluetooth device in his hear, extolling the virtues of his latest deal that he closed, how drunk he got the night before, and where he was heading next. All the while strolling like there is something up his but, and his hands are waving in the air like he's swatting flies or something buzzing around his head - maybe it's his arrogance.
But while it is amazing, it is also irritating, and the thought of having to deal with that type of behavior AFTER the door is shut scares the living hell out of me. The only people that might benefit from something like this rule change would be Bose - as I'm sure they would sell 1000's of additional Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones.
Furthermore, being that you would be 6 miles up in the sky, in an aluminum shielded tube, I cannot even imagine that you would get good coverage from within the airplane. I'm willing to bet that maintaining a call even for just a few minutes would be a hassle. Imagine that beefy salesman screaming into his bluetooth headset "can you hear me... hold one, let me get up and find a better signal" - all the while he's walking up and down the aisle, "Can you hear me NOW?" and holding the phone up to an airplane window in the galley.
Man it would be a disaster. He would either get his ass kicked by someone, or lose the deal because he thought he could hold the con call from the airplane.
Thank You FCC. you did everyone a favor.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
GOOD!
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Aircraft communications and navigation typically take place at VHF frequencies, between 108-132MHz. Voice communication is almost always AM in this frequency range.
Cell phones ~824-894MHz (traditional cellular) ~1900MHz (PCS - Sprint, Verizon, et al) - In the United States, anyway.
Regardless, the issue isn't interference with Avionics and communication, but the implications it would have on the cell network with one handset being able to reach (interfere with) hundreds of towers at one time.
So it's not going to happen in the US. Have other countries let flyers use their phones on a plane? Have there been marked results for this?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
All I can hope for is that they continue to ban the use of headsets. I don't mind someone emailing or (OMG) IMing. At least it's quiet and I'm not held hostage to their innane conversation. Didn't I just see a story on this that several airlines are rolling out wifi? And the difference is....? I guess it's slightly lower power, but wifi runs the same interference risks as cell phones.
As for the "technical" reasons. Completely bunk. Modern airplanes have all their signal wires twisted pair and shielded (very RF immune). While it IS possible for cell phones to create considerable interference (particularly GSM), airline systems are VERY well shielded. I seem to recall a "Mythbusters" episode (yes.. the paragons of the scientific process) that also confirmed this. The thought that it would interfere with ground based systems is simply rediculous. What ground based systems? Other cell networks? No. Airline communications? No -- totally different frequency band. Somebody give me a good example of where your cell phone was interfering in ground based systems while in your car (not your unshielded car stereo with a GSM phone). There is no difference between being on the ground or in the air. And no -- there is NO problem with communicating with a cell tower several miles DOWN -- with nothing in your way except the airplane fuselage. You'd actually get pretty good reception. Antenna sensitivity is also a function of height (and how much is in the way).
My understanding is that the planes were not at normal cruising heights. I'm not sure about this. And also consider that it was a handful of users, imagine this at a large terminal where there is the potential to have hundreds or even thousands of users switching in and out of local cell towers on a regular basis.
Just some thoughts, I honestly don't know what the answers are.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's a human right to be an arse back to people talking on their phones in public. Walk into them. They can't resist.
This isn't scientific evidence of mobile phone interruption from planes, but just about everytime a plane would fly over my apartment while on (low) approach to MSP my own calls would drop. It only happened as I heard the planes overhead -- never any other time.
Now, I know that people (like my father) refuse to turn their phones off while in flight because "the FCC doesn't know their heads from third base" (as he likes to state so frequently) but for me, while living there, it sucked.
I have planes on approach to MSP where I live now but I rarely use my mobile for voice calls so I don't notice the dropped calls as much and/or because they are at a much higher altitude and aren't flying as frequently over that route, I don't notice the problem.
Has anyone studied this? I have little doubt that they were able to successfully make calls, but interference isn't an all or nothing condition. A couple of calls coming from one plane probably created a negligible amount of interference. Scale that up to several thousand planes, what happens at that point?
As for the skyscraper argument, I give you credit for its insightfulness, but I'd also counter that with saying that the glass in most large building like that have metallic coatings to reflect heat. These coatings also attenuate cell phone signals, thus reducing their effective radiation footprint somewhat. Add to this that the tallest buildings are ~1,500feet, not ~35,000feet.
It isn't just being in range of several towers at once, it's the rapid switching from tower to tower as the airplane cruises at 500+ mph.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
That's exactly what I was saying. Why don't the FAA just come out with a ban that's simply based on this reasoning? Loud talking is banned in public libraries and cellphone use is banned in moving vehicles in some states, so why can't they ban cellphones on planes? I think if you took a poll of most psychologists, I think they'd back you up that having to listen to a plane full of people's cellphone conversations is like sitting on a powder keg.
Well, it would depend on the relay design of such a system. If the plane interacts directly with ground-based stations, it will probably work fine. However, a couple of proposals that I saw called for uplinking to satellites, geostationary or otherwise. Both can create a varying amount of delay. While VoIP could technically still work with a sat link, the delay through it could become particularly annoying...especially if the link were through a geostationary bird, rather than ones in low earth orbit.
I think it is likely that the FAA and FCC know that it is practically impossible to enforce this regulation (although I wouldn't mind a foxy flight attendant patting me down to find my turned-on cell phone, which is always on when I fly). I also think it is likely that there are lots of you who leave your phones on, too. And yet, our planes didn't crash, and here we all are. So I think they are saying no due to some other reason - it certainly isn't because it messes up navigational equipment; many of us are proof of that.
But what about the FBB? Is the FBB cool with them?
I can only imagine what 4 hours of inane babbling would do to me. I've been stuck on a 20 minute bus ride listening to some loud ass explain to a girl he went on a date with that he, infact, was not a creep despite his actions the previous night. I was decibels away from stealing his phone and throwing it out the window. Thank you FCC!
When I'm flying my own airplane, I can't seem to get a signal anywhere above 3,000 feet anyway. I wish I could, because the Treo's web browser would be useful for checking weather radar web sites.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Draw a right triangle. One right side is 5 miles, this half the usual distance between cell towers (rural, though oftentimes less). The other right side is 5 to 10 miles, this is the altitude of the plane. This triangle would represent your worst case scenario.
If you are directly overhead of a cell tower (perpendicular - best case). Your effective velocity towards the tower nears zero, and the shift is minimal. At worst case, you're 45 off, creating making your effective velocity 0.7 x speed of the aircraft.
Okay, speculation on my part. At present time, I don't believe that handset data speeds are high enough for airplane speeds to create a serious problem. With future revisions of EV-DO, et al, having higher data rates, it may become a technical hurdle.
The Flight 93 dramatization was shown on cable here just a while ago. They depicted an "airphone" which was built into the back of the plane's seats. They also had a flight attendant with a phone, but didn't specifiy if that was linked into the airphone system, or if it was a cell. The movie is based on the calls, and cockpit voice recorder. Even if you didn't know anybody killed on 911 (I didn't) it's gut wrenching to watch, knowing what will happen.
The Wikipedia article on Flight 93 indicates that all except two calls were made with the airphones. The two cell calls were made at low altitude, and lasted only a short time. As usual, there are a plethora of conspiracy theorists making all kinds of insane arguments, including that there was a shadow plane flying under 93! Thank-you Google, but really, thank-you Wiki for weeding out almost all of the insanity.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hasn't it been a generally accepted concept of Constitutional philosophy that only harmful actions are to be banned and/or prosecuted? You guys are saying "Thank god they're banning it... people with cell phones annoy me so much!", but the use of a cell phone is not in itself bad. In fact, talking about inane subjects on a cellphone in a confined space is by all means supported by law unless it interferes with necessary functions (which the ban may or may not be saying).
/may/ get this "air rage". It's your problem to deal with the situation-- politely if you choose to practice what you preach. Note, however, that if you choose to be violent, YOU will be held accountable.
Since when does the Slashdot community suggest and support that behavior be regulated? What next: No homosexuality because it's icky for it to go "in there"? No driving at the speed limit because you're late and it's annoying when other people don't understand that YOU didn't get up on time in the morning? Shall we now force people to speak with a specific accent because you don't like a regional diction?
At no point should it EVER be the government's responsibility to enforce "polite behavior" because you
Grow a pair, complainers, and solve your own social problems.
is basically that cell phones are designed for short-range communication (to the nearest base station).
As roaming between cells is designed to appear seamless, the handover to the next station would have to happen before the station one is currently connected to goes out of range (so the process is started when signal quality drops below a certain threshold). The next hop station is the one with the strongest signal.
This works fine on the ground, however in the air, the distance to the base stations is a lot greater, so it is not as easy to determine the best station for a handover, plus the high velocity has people enter and leave the cells pretty quickly. Being reachable via cell phone means that you have to establish an association to the nearest base.
And this is where it starts to get ridiculous. A plane with 300 people on board means that there are 300-epsilon phones constantly associating with base stations, and once they are done, they are already leaving for the next cell. With a GSM network, that happens over one or two 9600 baud signalling channels (basically time slots) that these 300 phones plus all the people on the ground compete for. In most parts of Europe, normal signalling traffic (which includes SMS) is so bad that two channels are constantly reserved for it, and that is without people on planes. I doubt other cell phone systems scale much better.
Battery is the other scalability problem. An 8 hour drive across Germany eats about a third of my cell phone battery, with reassociation happening every two minutes (yay for cell phone noise in the radio). Having the phone on a plane requires higher power levels, so I suspect my phone would run out of battery after two or three hours anyway.
So the entire thing is pointless. Cell phone technology was not made for that.
> Its sad to see people take of the mantle of a luddite, dismiss
:)
> logic (cell phones are safe on planes), and applaud these
> decisions because they dont like overhearing a conversation or two.
I agree; if there was even the remote possibility that a cell phone was dangerous to flight operations they would force you to check them at the gate. I suspect the real problem is that it makes billing difficult for AirPhone(c) and for your cellular provider when you're moving from tower to tower so quickly.
On the other hand, silence is golden. I love gadgets as much as the next guy but please, other people are morons, for the most part. Why wouldn't I applaud an arbitrary rule to prevent them from blathering while I try to watch movies, urinate, and sit confined in a really uncomfortable chair for five hours? You'd think societal probations alone would prevent this tacky behavior, but I hear it all the time. If they need the freedom to talk all the time, everywhere, perhaps we should have the freedom to use jamming devices?
Nothing Luddite about that --just a modern method of cutting off a dullard.
Ask me about my sig!
I think the thing is that a one-sided cell phone conversation feels like an intrusion into an established social situation. One can always hear the conversations of the actual people around you, but most of the time if feels like it belongs: the people are right there with you, you can hear both sides of the conversation, you can even join in if you feel like it. You don't feel excluded, unless it's some passionate couple total oblivious to everybody else around them.
And that's the thing with cell phone conversations in a public space: it's an exclusive conversation, and the person blabbing into the phone is mostly oblivious to the people around him or her. It feels rude and exclusionary. Normally, people who need a private space for conversation will move themselves to a private space, but cell phone users will instead take that private space from the others around them, and that feels like a violation.
Line of sight, it takes very little signal to get that far. You're only talking a little less than two miles distance, and ham radio operators have gone much farther on very low signal levels. Frequency also enters into it of course, lower ones will go much better than higher, but still - two miles is nothing.
That said, the aluminum skin of the aircraft is going to interfere and cut the signal strength. And the antennas for most cell sites are designed for maximum gain looking horizontally and slightly downward so they should be pretty deaf to signals from above.
Except for people caught in building collapses, auto crashes, and other situations with no other means of contacting the outside world. They probably died because of the lack of cell phones.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
This is so ludacris, americans have been so brain washed over the years about cell phones being an élitist tool that they are living in a fools paradise.
All international airlines will have cell phone service within 5 years, and the USA carriers will be left, as the whole of the USA has been by the late 90's cell phone technology wilderness.
Have you ever wondered, how cell phones became such a nuscience to americans but not to any one else, and why countries like sweeden now control the cell phone market.
Between ignoring GSM , and AT&T's worries about the new product eroding there core business, Americans have been left in a third world country for cell phones awareness.
It is wierd that us bunch of technocrats, applaud banning of technology?
-- email me @ 30,000 ft