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Cellphone Use On Planes Coming Soon?
s31523 writes "A while back it was reported that cell phone use was given the OK on Emirate airlines. The BBC is now reporting European agencies back the use of cell phones in air. Plans have been developed to introduce technology that allow cell phone use on planes without any risk of interference. A spokesman for the UK regulator Ofcom said there were still many stages to pass through before final approval was given to the roll out of the plans, but the regulator said that the technology could be implemented next year."
I can use my camera phone to take a picture of the city skyline during the night from 30000 ft
proud caffeine whore
Eagerly awaiting the Motorola Snake and all the jokes that come with it.
Laziness is a virtue, anyone who bothers to tell you otherwise, is clearly lacking it.
In related news, Boeing and Airbus both announced the immediate availability of "Cone Of Silence" option on all airplanes.
Here's hoping they'll charge ridiculously inflated rates that will keep the majority of people from using this.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Now we get loud mouthed cellphone jabbers AND 13 yr old SMS kiddies beeping away during the entire duration of Sydney and LA... I can forsee 15 hrs of absolute murderous psychopatic bliss.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
My phone has "airplane" mode where it doesn't transmit/receive, so I can still use it for its camera/music abilities.
On to the more important aspect: I hope this never gets implemented and for the most part I don't think it will. Lots of people like to sleep on planes and won't be able to with others yammering on their phones. Plus there is the extra time and cost for airlines to install the equipment to relay the signals. God only knows what "roaming" means at 38000 ft.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
"You'll never guess where I'm calling from!"
Without interference, eh? Yet another annoyance to deal with while flying: listening to some yammerhead yacking into their phone for the whole flight. I'll show you interference. I'm gonna yank that phone out of your hand and flush it down the toilet. Or tell the crew that the passenger next to me is holding some electrical device next to their head and it has wires sticking out of it and strange lights flashing. And it might be ticking!
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
I refuse to fly until an airline offers a cell phone free flight. I don't want to sit in a tiny tin can for 4+ hours listening to some dork yapping about god knows what, when there is no possibility of getting away from him.
If I can't "just walk away" then the only alternative is an ass kicking, and I assume if I punched someone out on a plane they would arrest me on the ground as a terrorists or something.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Similar to the upcoming US election results
If the person next to me talked on their phone the entire flight, I'd kill them lol. That would drive me completely insane. Also I'd say "You know they can easily make a cell phone sized bomb" but you can also already make a laptop sized bomb. And since I've heard X-ray machines wipe hard drives, they don't scan them. I say get rid of the laptops AND phones and people can just watch the damn movie and leave me alone!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"If some guy next to you is annoying, just ask him nicely to not be."
If we lived in a society where people tried to be nice to one another then you'd be right, the rants would be dumb.
We don't live in such a society.
It's pretty clear from the way people act with cell phones on the ground that this is going to be an annoying change on airplanes. Who here hasn't seen/interacted with someone who talked excessively loud over their cell? I see (more hear) those people every day, are they magically going to vanish on airplanes? Same goes for people who talk forever.
We already have passenger's irritating other passengers without care on airplanes. My last flight we had someone who couldn't get a particular movie to play on the (obviously cheap) entertainment system. It was an old movie and (in my opinion) not very good but they kept complaining until the pilot decided to reset the system just to shut the guy up. After the reset he was fine, his movie played. Everyone else started getting random movies and the sound system didn't work but he was quite happy with himself. Add that to the multiple people swinging their luggage about without care while we were on the ground, the guy who went and got something out of his luggage when we were on the final runway, and the person who complained about the food and the trip was a quite unpleasant 9+ hours. Now add on someone talking on a cell phone for the entire trip, they don't even have to be that loud but they, or someone else, is always talking. Tell me, do you want to fly on that airplane?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I'd rather someone be allowed to surf the web next to me, goatse and all, than be allowed to gab on their cell. I even hate it that they can use their cells in the terminals. Why does anyone need to call to say "I'm on the ground now"? Obviously we can't rely on people to be considerate of others, but up till now we could rely on airline restrictions for a little peace. I vote we allow text messages, but no voice messages. Everyone gets to play the quiet game. Shut the hell up.
Let me get this straight:
You can bring on a cell phone, but not an iPod...
You can bring on a lighter, but not a water bottle...
You can wear a belt, but you have to remove your shoes...
Are they just making the rules up randomly or something?
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
This will be to "protect" and "ensure the highest possible safety regime", reign on US territory at all times; never mind that the southern border is wide open and so is the northern one to some extent.
Sadly nothing or very little is being done about it.
Think about it. People on long haul flights in tiny uncomfortable seats are usually tense, tired and easily pissed off. Having some jerk talking on the phone in the next seat for hours might well be the final straw! That means someone will FINALLY get killed for talking loudly on the cellphone.
Fox News will have a around the clock news coverage of the incident, and therefore all the idiots out there that don't realize it yet will finally hear the news that it is actually rude to make unwilling bystanders a part of their shitty little lives by shouting their boring ass conversations in their ear. Maybe then five or six percent of them will become more considerate, therefore making the world a slightly better place for all of us.
Way to go Emirates Airlines, I've never heard of you before, but if I ever need to fly to Emirates you will be my number one choice!
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Or maybe the government was lying to you when they told you about those calls?...........nah!!!
I'm a Book
On the Bookshelf
There won't be any issue with people talking on the phone during flights. Being a frequent flier, I sometimes forget to turn my phone off or switch it to airplane mode. Though my misdeeds led me to the following discovery: you don't get a signal above roughly 10000 feet. Odds are, even if someone wanted to, nobody would even have the ability to carry on annoying conversations for an entire flight.
Honestly, it's a non-issue.
So far, planes are the only safe heaven one can get, when it comes to mobile phone terror. Now they want to take that away from us? I have horrible visions of me sitting in a plane, with 400 different ringtones, 400 people trying to shout over eachother. Just immagine you are on a 20 hour flight and your neighbour is telling his entire family, one by one, every detail of his holiday. That's enough to bludgeon somebody to death with their phone. I expect the number of violent attacks against fellow passengers to dramatically increase.
I hope at least they make the calls so bloody expensive that only those people, who currently use the onboard phones, will actually use their mobile. I'm thinking somewhere in the line of $5+/minute. That'll deter most people. They'd also try to limit the available "lines" to something like 10 or 20 to keep things down.
Sorry but people who can't be without a phone for 20 hours, should either use the onboard phones and pay the price or consult a psychologist.
I love my mobile and make good use of it but planes, restaurants and cinemas should be phone free zones.
My understanding (of old) is that the primary reason for the ban was not that interference was inevitable, but that not all the myriad makes and models of phones could be adequately tested.
Maybe they've been doing tests and not finding anything.
The "pico cell" concept in the FA is interesting - do 2G cellphones normally adjust power output to cell distance / signal strength? Otherwise, the signals from the cells are just as much an issue as before.
This could form a new niche market for in-ear monitors.
Pssst... you can wear them the entire time you're in the airport: http://www.earplugsonline.com/
Those earplugs + noise canceling headphones + a sleeping pill if you want = Transoceanic bliss.
Throw in a PSP or DS and a movie or two and you are good to go. Just don't forget to bring some spare batteries.
"Fear of people on cellphones?"
Fear has nothing to do with it. It is a completely normal and sane hatred of people on cellphones, you insensitive clod!
Your dorm room sat in front of your computer?
threadeds blog
Allow SMS/text messaging only. No voice. Then we can have peace and quiet, and bozo business types who're afraid to be out of touch for an hour or so can still communicate with their underlings.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Your personal cone of silence: http://www.globalgadgetuk.com/Personal.htm
And yes, they do ship to the US. It is mailed as a 'research device'.
I assume that they plan to put a cellular transceiver on the aircraft and use some specialized technology to get the signals from the airplane to the ground -- satellite or some special mode of dealing with ground stations or something.
Anyway, just when I thought that they couldn't find any more ways on top of miniscule seats with no leg room, long unexplained takeoff delays, intrusive security, losing baggage, scheduling impossible connections, overbooking, and chronically late flights to make airline travel more distasteful, they've come up with this. I rarely do airplanes any more, and the last time I did, it took me something like 36 hours to get from Burlington, VT to Seattle.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
likely mobile devices will never be allowed on commercial flights on american airlines, as the government, and therefore the people's will, here has little sway over business practices. airlines dont want you to have portable electronic devices, so you aren't gonna get them. at least not overtly.
the question then is why, which people seem to think they know. it is most definitely not because they interfere with the flight systems. think about how many hundreds of people are on their cellphone or laptop inside the airport, why is there no record of that causing a problem with planes taking off/landing, or even messing with ATC? even if your device matched a signal a plane used, it stands to reason that the multi-million dollar commercial plane would overpower your cute little phone, and you would lose the connection, not them.
so then the most likely reason is that the airlines want to control communication. if something goes wrong, and it is apparent that the plane will go down, then passengers will of course call family and such. the stewardesses will make sure they do no such thing, believing that even the lowly gameboy might interfere with the pilots' rectifying of the situation.
once the plane crashed and everyone is either dead or in too much a state of shock, the airline can retrieve the blackbox, debrief the pilots if they survived, and now the only story on what exactly happened to the plane is one written by corporation not interested in being sued by the families of all the passengers.
You can get them at Uline and come in quantities of 200 for $24.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Let me guess, you think cell phones inside movie theatres is a neat idea too?
You're a very poor guesser. You just compared watching a movie for couple of hours in your nearby theater, to a Transatlantic travel taking potentially a day or more.
In which case the ability to keep in contact with someone is more needed? Let me guess...
Gee... I thought we could already make crystal clear calls from 25,000ft up on cell phones based on the calls from supposed passengers on 9/11!
Oh wait... someone actually tested that with cell phones and none worked at all...
Funny isn't it how they were all made through Verizon and how chummy Verizon has been with DHS and the other agencies. hmmmmmm...
Well, thanks to the terrorists, these cell phone users will be safe from a little old lady with a hammer!
threadeds blog
Who gets to choose where they sit on a plane?
I don't see why this was modded informative. Cell phones have been a problem for quite a while. I have one myself, and I rarely use it when there are other people present.
I take it from your post that you don't actually fly ever, because nobody that has been on a plane in the last few years would take those positions.
I am personally a large man, while I don't have a whole lot of extra flab, I do take up my entire seat, and more if we're talking about a 737. When somebody is taking up more space than is in a seat due to being obese they should be charge for the extra space. I barely fit in a seat as it is, and that's with the shoulders I was born with. I shouldn't have to forfeit any of my space because the person next to me chose to put on a lot of weight.
You do have a bit of a point with babies, but it is still a miserable way to fly.
As for the phones, they are basically a menace to any sort of restful flight. The vast majority of cell phone users don't realize that you don't have to yell into them to be heard. I have one myself, and most of the time I can't hear myself and the microphone still picks it up sufficiently for the other party to hear my clearly.
Limiting the cell phone use on plans to a specific walled off area would be fine by me, but expecting me or the flight attendants to moderate how loud is too loud because people invariably don't care is fundamentally unreasonable.
without any risk of interference.
That's "no risk of electromagnetic interference". There is a significant risk of pugilistic interference.
http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/editorial_multi_image_with_table_0099.shtm
since august 4th lighters are allowed again.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
cause listening to everyone chat aloud into their cell phones is one really hot feature that is missing from air travel
I don't care if they allow cell phones on planes that won't be here for 12 hours.
When you book your ticket they'd ask you which kind of seating you want, with or without cellphone conversations allowed.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Qantas is running a trial of 'pico-cells' in some Boeing 767's. I used my mobile between Brisbane & Perth a few weeks ago. It's only available from GSM phones though.
My $0.05 (AUD - we don't have pennies any more)
As Web 2.0 Journal this morning puts it, "One thing is an iPhone, but a skiPhone might just be the death-knell for (relative) silence on airplanes."
Sorry, your mobile may be of high importance to you, but to me its just a tool that lets me make or receive phone calls occasionally, invariably out of earshot of other people.
Deal with it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Like most people here, I too dread the thought of some 15 year old or wannabe CEO type blabbing on the phone next to me for 15 hours.
However, I think it's unlikely to be a problem. Why? Because the airline will own the microcell to which you are connnecting and you will be 'roaming' when you use it. Translation: They get to charge whatever they want. How does five bucks a minute for calls sent or received sound?
Anyone who will be able to afford to use the service for anything more than SMS is probably flying first-class or their own jet anyway, so most of us won't be disturbed.
Sure we'll have to put up with a few minutes of "hey, guess where I'm calling from" like we did when airphones first came out, but beyond that, I don't really think we need to get too worried about this.
Of course the TSA will probably decide that terrorists could use mobile phones to detonate an explosive, so they'll get banned anyway.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
People have the idea that you need to shout in a phone. Most also listen to music so load I can hear it on the other side of the train carriage. So deaf and shouting in the phone(also has something to do with not hearing your own voice back in the phone).
Also, I found it easier to shut myself out of a normal conversation. People also don't get hints like "Mobile phones, without the dodgy ringtones" and telling someone that I really hate loud music and telephone conversations. I don't mind a 2 minute call, but a girl telling how the sex was with her boyfriend IS IRRITATING, really if they are talking to the person that is waiting for them on the next station (I'm here now, see you in a few seconds).
....the super-expensive satellite one's, for long-haul at least. Why do we need cellphones too?
I mean, if you can get off the phone for 2 hours for short-haul trip then you have issues, and if you need to make an real urgent call on long-haul, it's possible while anything more than a minimum chat is prohibitively expensive for most. What's wrong with that I ask you?
throw new NoSignatureException();
Uh... violence, dude.
You whole response is just lame and I'm guessing you have problems in social settings.
;)
A. I go without making a phone call on my cell for days let alone one flight. However, I could still care less if somebody is in earshot of me talking on their phone. I don't have ADD and can't still manage. What if somebody makes 4-5 plan trips a week? Are they still "Sad" for wanting to use the phone on a flight?
B. It appears that you will be the one dealing with it shortly.
C. My cell doesn't just let me make or receive phone calls occasionally. I can also listen to music, browse web pages, watch video, send text messages, etcetera.
>In which case the ability to keep in contact with someone is more needed?
Wouldn't be so bad if people had important conversations. Most just yell about nothing at full volume into their phones for an hour. There is very little short of loss of documents that means you need to contact anyone midflight - you couldn't do it before and everyone got by.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Every one of those planes crashed!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Most of those calls were made from Air-phones in the plane, NOT cellphones. The ones that were made from cellphones were dropped pretty quickly according to the people who were called.
Nothing worse than trying to get some rest on a flight and having an idiot next to you talking on the phone all the way.
Obviously, you do not fly very often.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Cell phones are different because it isn't always the person sitting next to you who initiates the jackassery - other people can call them. Can you honestly ask somebody not to answer their phone if it starts ringing?
Me? I think this is a terrible move. Air travel is bad enough as it is without having to put up with somebody talking 12 inches from your ear for hours. NOBODY is suffering with the current system.
If somebody annoys me with a cellphone, ie. it's obvious that it's not an emergency call and they're not going to be hanging up anytime soon, I'm going to lean over and start talking loudly into the cellphone for as long as it takes for them to give up.
No sig today...
Except on Southwest Airlines. They have first come first served seating ^_^
Cellphone jammers FTW! http://www.globalgadgetuk.com/Personal.htm end of line...
Have you ever sat next to a loud, yammering jackass on a commuter bus or train? I'd guess not. In the mass transit zones around major cities it's a total nightmare. (Except Tokyo - people talk on their 'phones but lower their voices and shield their mouth/microphone with a cupped hand.)
Now imagine that hell on a crowded 'plane where you can't move away and you could be shot by an air marshall if you punch the dickhead.
If someone is on a 'plane ranting about fat people taking up too much room etc the cabin crew would take action. So how can you say that the rants are more annoying than the actual problems? If you're reading the rants on
Basically I have no faith that people will behave with consideration and courtesy towards their fellow passengers so we shouldn't even give them the chance to make cattle class even worse. And no I don't feel I should have to pay a premium for the cellphone-free section.
If the airlines absolutely must do this I hope they set up designated areas to stand and talk (another poster's suggestion of the wing or the ground seems reasonable) with a time limit and a limit to the number of assholes.
..over the ocean, do the flight attendants change from calling them 'mobile phones' to 'cell phones'?
Imagine how funny it will be up in first class with every single one of those ego-maniacal twits all on their phones at the same time, all thinking they are the most important person on the plane, and all being pissed-off that everyone else in first class is on the phone too. The airlines could pipe video of the first class free-for-all to the coach passengers as entertainment.
It's about time some common sense is applied to the problem and cell phones are allowed as they should be. If some guy next to you is annoying, just ask him nicely to not be.
Which is, in fact, what I do.
It doesn't work.
Years of customer service work have taught me how to ask something while being perfectly polite and perhaps even a bit ingratiating. When I tried, "Excuse me sir, but could you move your arm?" on a man who was sleeping across two seats on a flight -- including the seat occupied by me -- I got a rant about how I was a racist and he had every right to be on the same plane I was.
I live in New York City, and before that, in Boston. That means a lot of time on crowded transportation. You ever tried asking a teenager to keep it down? How about a group of them? And that was when I was college-student and grad-student aged. If you even LOOK like you might know 30, forget about asking them ANYTHING.
And then, of course, there are the passengers who hit up the airport bar first, or the ones who apparently bathe in garlic and use onion powder for deodorant, or the ones who don't care that their child is an unholy menace. (Youg babies crying? I don't like it but I accept and understand it. A kid under 2 is probably overtired, stressed out, cooped up, and really not comfortable with the sensations of the flight, and has no other way to express it. A second-grader throwing things? Not so much.)
So, yeah. Flying is hell because probably 10% of passengers are just born assholes, another 30% of passengers have no respect or consideration for ANYONE, and another 15% make spectacles of themselves by complaining about the first 40%, and then they all drag the rest of us down with. Interestingly, the subway is hell for the same reason. At least planes don't tend to have rodents.
Okay, here's what I don't get about Slashdot's tagging system. Supposedly it takes the most frequently-tagged values and puts them on the story. All well and good, but did lots of people really randomly type shootpeoplethatshoutintotheirphone into the tagging system?? It seems more likely that someone noticed that tag, thought it was funny, and promoted it.
What is the real criteria for the tags to be used?
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
That the "freedom-loving" slashdotters are all — posters and moderators — claiming to be happy, that the big lie of "cell phones may interfere with safety equipment on board" is being used to stop their fellow passengers from using their cell phones on the planes.
Evidently, the ends justify the means... Lying to millions of travelers to prevent a tiny minority of them from being inconsiderate, while at the same time offering them an option to pay $6/minute for the same sort of inconsideration...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why is everyone making such a big deal about this? It's pretty well-established that cell phones will not work on flights once the flight goes above about 5,000 feet. My own experiments showed my cell phone stopped working about 2,000 feet up. My roommate a few months ago was a private pilot, and we lived in/flew over San Diego where there's a cell tower for every 50 sq. feet of ground cover. Other projects have yielded similar results to my own, and are far more scientific to boot. Couple this evidence with the fact that any lengthy flight is going to fly at well over 30,000 feet over areas with no cell phone towers.
All that allowing cell phones will do in the US is make it so that a hundred or so people will have phones on during the whole flight, and those phones will switch to their highest power mode trying to find a tower. The pilot will hear this buzzing in his headset because his receiver's front end will overload. Try this: drive down the interstate, put your cell phone in your center console, turn your radio on and turn the speakers up. You hear that electronic humming that pops up every once in a while? That's your phone establishing a connection with a new tower. It is using the highest transmit setting at first, overloading the receive sensitivity of your car's stereo and causing a blaring sound through your speakers (actually it is inducing signal in your receiver, and this experiment will probably work in your stereo even when you play CDs/Tapes). Imagine a pilot trying to listen to a tower and instead hearing this cell phone garbage. It would not make for a very safe flight. What's really interesting? Modern radios are more susceptible to this behavior than older, tube-driven radios/amplifiers!
Unless cell phones become far more powerful, and aircraft switch *back* to vacuum-tube radio receivers, there will be 1) no point to allowing cell phones on flights, and 2) it will actually make flights far more dangerous by effectively DoS'ing your pilot's communications.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
If airlines are even considering this it's because they're going to make money on the deal. All calls will be charged at a premium rate, with the airline taking a cut.
This means the cabin crew will be told to not come down too hard on the morons, no matter how much they want to. The people making the decisions will be safe in their plush offices while the poor stewards are dealing with the air rage it causes.
I think the best tactic will be to lean over and really obviously try to listen in on the conversation or something like that.
"Hey, this creepy guy is trying to listen in!"
"Yeah, he's, like totally leaning over here to listen to what we're saying"
See how long they can stay on the 'phone like that. I'm betting after thirty seconds it'll be, "listen, I'll call you later when I'm on the ground"
No sig today...
Airlines have found they not reached the limits of annoying passengers yet. Hobbit-size seats, stuffy air, trip-long fasting, long bathroom lines were not enough. Bring on the cell phones!
It can easily work.
They'll put a "cell" inside the 'plane and beam it to ground via a special link...
No sig today...
Get them while you can: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/conformity/1007/index.php?startpage=10 The FCC doesn't like people breaking the law. Just don't bring jammers onto a plane please. It would be a bad idea.
That annoying occasional buzzing seems to only come from GSM phones, like ones from Cingular and T-Mobile, and not from CDMA phones like the ones Verizon uses. This is an interesting point, even though the range of that buzzing is usually only a few feet from the phone.
Did you miss the whole 9/11 thing with people calling the ground reporting they were being hijacked? Obviously phones are more than capable of holding extended conversations at altitude. The biggest reason it would have problems would be hand offs between towers and the fact that cell towers are designed to radiate signal across the surface of the earth and not upwords. The distance between the phone and the tower isn't a big deal since there is next to nothing to obstruct the signal itself, so high power isn't really required.
... aircraft radios have much high requirements for interference rejection. All consumer devices are required to not emit interference, the FCC has regulations on this and requires the manufacture to prove their devices won't emit interference beyond acceptable limits. Read the manual that comes with your cell phone, PC, radio, TV, whatever, you'll find the FCC mandated information detailing what it has to do/not do when it comes to interference. Aircraft electronics have a completely different set of rules do to the fact that ... peoples lives may depend on it.
The 'buzzing' you speak of is due to improper shielding of the equipment you are dealing with. My car has NEVER had such a problem, and my iPhone SITS on the center console plugged into the dock which feeds my radios AUX input. My PC Speakers in my office have had the problem, they are $15 throw away speakers with unshielded cables. Aircraft radios aren't exactly like your cheap ass car radio or my cheap ass PC speakers. You also have a cell phone that is extremely close to the device that is picking up the interference, which I doubt the pilot is going to let you into the cockpit with your Nokia, even if it gives you a better signal.
You are also using devices which are not required to protect themselves against interference
And the laptops that people use on aircrafts have far more high energy circuits in them that operate on a large number of frequencies which are just as likely to cause problems, so again, if cell phones were REALLY an issue, NO electronics with any sort of oscillator would be allowed on a plane, if they were actually worried about it.
I suggest you learn a little more about how/why interference actually causes problems before pretending to know that cell phones will cause problems.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
A phone converts sound into electrickery and similar whatnots, transmits that and then it's all reversed at the other end by the magic of science or something like that. There's a stupid cow in my office who apparently hasn't realized this, and she's not the only one.
So get her on board and it makes no difference if you're at the front of the plane, back of the plane, or sitting on the tailplane - you'd still not be able to hear yourself think.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
How many modem cards will you need for that? They can only transmit one band at a time, so if you block 1900, all the phones will switch to 1800/900 or possibly 3G at 2100. And don't forget CDMA- 1900/1700(Korea)/800/450(Eastern Europe/Russia?). And for even more fun, throw in some PHS (1900) or PDC (800/1500). Impractical.
OSx86 FTW
Voila
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Typical loud mouthed moron on BART (SF Bay Area subway):
.. NO ..."
LMM: "WHERE YOU AT?"
LMM: "I'M ON BART"
LMM: "BART!"
LMM: "I'M ON BART!"
LMM: "YES
LMM: "I'M ON BART!"
[Train goes in to tunnel]
LMM: "HELLO?"
LMM: "HELLO?"
LMM: "HELLO?"
[Repeat N times directly proportional to loudness and stupidness of conversation]
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Did you miss the whole 9/11 thing with people calling the ground reporting they were being hijacked? Obviously phones are more than capable of holding extended conversations at altitude.
;-)]).
The experiments I cited, and later reports proved that the "cell phone" calls made by the hijack victims were actually placed by the plane's airphones. Airphones are satellite phones on many plane flights that require the use of a credit card to activate. Do a Google search, and you will even find a link from QUALCOMM, CINGULAR, and VERIZON all stating that the reported cell phone calls did not take place via cell phone.
Read the physics experiment article that I posted, and try a google search for "9/11 cell phone". Or find a friend with a pilot's license and try it yourself -- above 2,000, even at low-speed (2,500ft @ 65mph airspeed in a Cessna 150 is how I tried it), you will be hard-pressed to get a cell tower, and when you do you will have it for at most a few seconds. The reason for this is multi-fold: 1) cell tower antennas have horizontal, as opposed to vertical, polarization. This means that their signal spreads closer to the ground, and the radiation lobe is very small in the up-and-down direction. The reason? A cell tower would just waste power by broadcasting up in the air when there will be at most two people up there using that particular tower for 15 seconds. It makes a lot more sense to broadcast with a pattern that hugs the ground, where most of your customers are, especially when the cell company must pay the FCC by the watt for their tower. 2) at 30,000 feet, you are going to be a minimum of *five miles* from a tower, and you will not have the benefits of ground-wave propagation to help your tiny signal reach the tower. Coupled with (1), you simply won't get a signal (and you don't. Discreetly try it if you don't believe me [legal disclaimer: I won't be held liable for anything that happens should you actually try it
Do a Google search, and you will even find a link from QUALCOMM, CINGULAR, VERIZON, and NOKIA all stating that the reported cell phone calls did not take place via cell phone. Nokia is even working on a wireless carrier system specifically for flights, which will allow the use of a cell phone in-flight, but using the AirPhone system.
This stated, cell phones were used on the Pennsylvania flight, but only after the plane was well below 8,000 feet of altitude (one of my posts a few months ago on this topic had a link to a nice graph from a conference paper showing the altitude was about 4,000 feet, and that the terrain at the crash site was ~2,000 feet, lending more weight to the polarization/propagation arguments above). A normal commercial flight would only be at this low altitude for a few minutes during landing pattern, and about 2-3 minutes during takeoff (or slightly longer if, y'know, the plane was hijacked and the hijackers were trying to evade radar, or were intending to crash the plane, or something).
As for interference rejection, yes shielding helps. But you cannot shield your antenna, and it is always going to be a conductive source for interference to enter your receiver. I have a very nicely shielded ham radio that still experiences front-end overloading from nearby radio sources, like my cell phone, other ham radios, etc. I cannot vouch for its shielding when compared to your car stereo's, nor to a plane's ATC comm system, but I'd like to think that it's pretty good. Buzzing still happens when I get a phone call, even on a non-harmonic signal.
Just my $.02,
Reid
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I am sure I read somewhere that people had used their phones to call loved ones or something... maybe I'm wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93
To all of you who worry about your neighbor yakking away on their cell phone through a flight, chill out! Many planes today already have seat-back phones. Have you ever seen anyone use them? When you're in the air, you'll be connected to the plane's own cell, with a satellite uplink. Surely they'll charge roaming fees just as exorbitant as what the seat-back phones cost today.
Just hope that you don't accidentally roam onto their network while the plane is on the ground!
I really don't see the problem with allowing cell phones to be used on intercontinental flights over the ocean. And since that is generally international territory, who's going to stop airlines from allowing it? Just a slight reception problem, but who cares?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
B. No. Because if someone sat next to me starts making a phone call, I will politely ask them to cease. And if they won't then I'll start complaining to the airline - and if a lot of people do this (as they surely will) then there will need to be a policy change.
C. So take your sim out and listen to MP3s and watch videos. As for SMS, I don't have a problem with that (except for the sadness of people constantly texting their lives away) on a plane - I just don't want someone else's life story blaring out next to me.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Did somebody actually pay for these tests? I would've done them for free about 5 years ago.
From my own experience, Nextel phones lose service in the general neighborhood of about 2,000 feet above ground, and my Cing..er AT&T service normally gives it up around 5,000 feet. I've never had a connection work above 18,000 feet speedin' along from 200 knots to 600 knots.
The worst thing about cell phones, from my perspective in the "front office" is that I can hear them attempting to establish a connection with the cell network. It's an annoying static-like tapping noise in my headset at about 120 bpm. Nextel seems to be the worst, by that I mean, the loudest. I can frequently tell when someone has left their phone on during a flight because during the descent to the airport between about 5,000 and 2,000 feet you hear 'em trying to establish a connection with the network.
Now, with all that said, it's really more of a nuisance than it is a hazard. And for me, I just find it particularly annoying. Also, for those that choose not to disable their phone (or at the very least, put it into airplane mode), it will rapidly deplete your battery. So, if you like to leave your phone on, make sure you packed your charger.
I don't discount your experience, but I wanted to add some sunshine in there, that maybe it's not universally dreary out there.
First, I'll say I have a pretty high tolerance for other people. As far as I'm concerned, you live in the world, meaning you live in a community of people, and you don't have the right for your "personal space" (whether it be physical, visual, aural or olfactory) to be free of the experience of other people.
I have asked on two occasions that someone stop kicking my seat, in a movie theater. One time, the recipiente was pretty shocked at me and obviously upset, but they stopped kicking my seat; in the other case, they apologized.
I'm no frequent flyer, but in the last couple of years I've flown to several destinations, including trips to Europe and cross-country trips (and I absolutely hate flying, I'm the worst white-knuckle flyer). I had two times where someone else made the trip unpleasant for me: once, when a kid was talking about how we were going to crash, but really, that's just my own foible; and another time, when someone started getting airsick behind me when we were at the gate. Which is hardly his fault. Pretty much everyone on both my flights was polite and, if not friendly, at least kept to themselves.
demi
What are these "silent" planes of which you speak?
A background hum of conversation might actually be better than the monotonous low-frequency rumble which is what we currently listen to.
Unless you put your headphones on to block it out - in which case, I think you will find they will also block out the noise of other passengers!
Anyhoo you all seem to be under some misapprehension that teenagers will be able to AFFORD the airborne tariffs, because you can bet they will be charging big dollar.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Instead of allowing the usual, synchronous voice communications, they can let passengers use their phones for asynchronous voice communication: during the flight they can carry on their conversation like normal - and then, when the plane lands, their part of the conversation will be delivered to the party they were calling, and they'll be able to hear the other party's responses at their leisure...
As a side note - just why exactly can't we use devices that generate radio signals, again? I've always heard that it interferes with... something - but I don't know if that's true or what it can affect... I'm pretty sure none of my personal electronics generate signals on the same band as GPS, commercial airline communications, etc...
But, my, sure is handy how security restrictions work to encourage passengers to spend more money... Can't use your cell phone? Use ours, just swipe your credit card... Can't bring your own water on board? Buy a bottle at the terminal for $5... This is why I hate flying on big airlines.
Bow-ties are cool.
Personally I will never fly on a plane that allows this. Maybe if there is a no-cell-phone area. Or even better, no cell phones, no babies, no teenage girls and no Europeans. But I digress.
In addition to annoying the shit out of everyone around you, there is a serious risk that devices like this will eventually crash a plane. I already posted this as a reply to another comment, hopefully I wont get filtered, but here is what the IEEE Spectrum says:
Unsafe At Any Airspeed?
March 01, 2006
Cellphones and other electronics are more of a risk than you think
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/spectrum/mar06/3069 [ieee.org]
[...]
In March 2004, acting on a number of reports from general aviation pilots that Samsung SPH-N300 cellphones had caused their GPS receivers to lose satellite lock, NASA issued a technical memorandum that described emissions from this popular phone. It reported that there were emissions in the GPS band capable of causing interference. Disturbingly, though, they were low enough to comply with FCC emissions standards.
[...]
In one telling incident, a flight crew stated that a 30-degree navigation error was immediately corrected after a passenger turned off a DVD player and that the error reoccurred when the curious crew asked the passenger to switch the player on again. Game electronics and laptops were the culprits in other reports in which the crew verified in the same way that a particular PED caused erratic navigation indications.
There's a simple solution. Give her a bullhorn and tell her to use it for shouting into the phone, just in case somebody doesn't hear her clearly enough.
Either she gets the hint, or she takes it literally and somebody shoots her. Either way you get blessed silence.
On a more serious note, she may be somewhat hard of hearing. Many people will shout as a reflex when they can't hear clearly. Their own feeling of lack of clarity in sounds makes them doubt that they are making themselves heard. In that case a special phone with unusually high volume and a volume control may do the trick. Hearing both herself and the other person painfully loud through the earpiece should neutralize her shouting reflex.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
I do the same, I vote with my euros: I'll fly only if it's needed for very important business reasons*, otherwise I just prefer a ship, a train, a bus, or a car.
* Saying 'I refuse to do that' is too restrictive. I am a pragmatist, and sometimes we do have to do things contrary to our preferences, because the world at large has a different modus operandi. I run Debian GNU/Linux as my primary desktop and workstation OS, and it's the only OS on my PC, but I don't erase the preloaded WinXP from my laptops after I create my GNU/Linux partitions, as having the ability to be 100% compatible with the world at large is still necessary, even though I rarely need to boot into Windows.
Why do you post as an AC, by the way? Freedom is something you must sign with your name and be proud for it. If we have to hide when we talk about freedom, then we have already lost our case.
Talking about freedom in Soviet Russia would guarantee you a visit by the KGB. But here in the West we still have some limited freedom. If you self-censor and hide your head under the sand every time you talk about freedom then you help creating a non-free society. Freedom must be used, otherwise you lose it. It is a responsibility of every responsible free individual to show that they are not afraid to use their names when talking about freedom.
Does this mean that it would be possible to use not only a phone but also a 3G/HSDPA laptop while flying?
Not all that interesting. 200-300 volts at the plate of a tube verses 3-5 volts at the collector of a transistor being excited by a few hundred milliwatts from a transmitter? Pretty easy to see which one is going to be susceptible to the RF emissions.