Cell Phones To Be Allowed On UK Planes

Matty the Monkey writes "The British regulator in charge of air travel has approved cellphones for use on airline flights, reports the BBC. Airlines will be allowed to activate base stations in the plane's tail after takeoff, creating a zone of mobile coverage around the plane. 'The services could stop working once aircraft leave European airspace. Initially, only second generation networks will be offered but growing interest would mean that third generation, or 3G, services would follow later, said Ofcom. The cost of making a mobile phone call from a plane will be higher than making one from the ground.'"

Comments

just so long...

[Coraon]

as the pilots aren't making calls while flying. I don't want the last thing I hear is "Gotta go, about to crash"

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

It was a horrible forced invasion of personal space and having to listen to someone blabber on and on "Like I know she does not like me because, like, she totally gave me a bitchy look yesterday and I was so like, peeved you know? because like, I think she is just so.... like not on top of it...... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

When other people force me into their conversations in public, where I cannot really move away without significant inconvience, and the conversations are that inane, I generally join in. For instance, you could have said something like, "Oh, you know I hate when I get bitchy looks. You always know that... [I'm not going to continue, but if you talked for five minutes, they'll get off the phone." Alternatively, instead of talking for a long time, you could be uncouth; "She was probably bitchy because she was getting her period. After she's bled out her vagina for a few days, I'm sure she'll be fine."

The important thing is to entertain yourself as you interfer.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[Naughty Bob]

>I once had the displeasure of sitting on a plane on the tarmac for two hours....

It will be much worse when the plane is up and flying. Changes in pressure, plus the engine noise, are going to make hearing the tinny little speaker in mobile (since this is the UK) phones very difficult. And when hearing goes, shouting follows. Joy.

Re:Fist fights at 30,000 feet.

[elliotm00]

This whole problem of people talking loudly on a cell phone is due to a fundamental flaw in cell phone design. In the old-style AT&T wired phones, your voice was fed back to the handset receiver, so you could hear yourself when you're talking.

With cell phones, this doesn't happen, so you feel like you need to speak loud enough to hear yourself. Which is louder than a normal conversation because you're covering one ear.

Why cell phone manufacturers don't feed back your voice to the receiver, I don't know.

But do you know why cell phones are not allowed?

[nickull]

The real reason why cell phones are banned on planes has nothing to do with their interference with a planes navigation system. Think about it - if there was even a minimal chance that a cell phone could cause a crash of a commercial jet, no one would be allowed to bring one on board. The FAA has tests and will fail any wire not shielded to withstand such interference.

The real reason is that cell phone networks are based on a 2 dimensional system. Cell towers grant leases based on which tower has the strongest signal from a particular phone. When the user of the phone moves from one tower's coverage to another, the lease is transferred. If a plane full of people flew over a metropolitan area with 150 cell phones negotiating leases, chaos ensues as the system is not designed to support a 3 dimensional model. Newer networks are but the older ones will be problematic. I highly suspect the British trial will have a special base on the plane which will take all the leases so the ground towers will not be affected.

The last reason is annoyance. I actually used Skype on planes from Vancouver to Frankfurt equipped with Boeing's Connexion internet service. While the trial ended, it was clear that using Skype on an overnight commercial flight could cause a great deal of annoyance to passengers wanting to sleep. ON local flights, it might be acceptable for a few sociopaths to talk the entire time thus ensuring their fellow passengers have full details of their personal lives.

I personally think that it will be less than two days before we see a newspaper article about a cleaning crew finding a passenger duct taped to the planes toilet with a cell phone shoved up his hind side.