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FAA To Reevaluate Inflight Electronic Device Use
coondoggie writes "If you have been on a commercial airline, the phrase 'The use of any portable electronic equipment while the aircraft is taxiing, during takeoff and climb, or during approach and landing,' is as ubiquitous but not quite as tedious as 'make sure your tray tables are in the secure locked upright position.' But the electronic equipment restrictions may change. The Federal Aviation Administration today said it was forming a government-industry group to study the current portable electronic device use policies commercial aviation use to determine when these devices can be used safely during flight."
Because the reason they are banned isn't because of electromagnetic emissions, but rather because it is a crowd control technique. There's nothing special about the first 10 and last 10 minutes of a flight, other than it's the most likely time for a plane to crash land. The regulation is all about causing passengers to pay attention to flight attendants and nothing to do with avionics.
Didn't Mythbusters cover this?
Yes.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Second paragraph in the article. "The group however will not "consider the airborne use of cell phones for voice communications during flight.""
Cell phone do not interfere with airplane equipment. Totally different frequency bands. Cell phones are used on planes (surreptitiously) every day. Occasionally and angry stewardess, but no other ill effects.
Cell phones are not allowed on planes at the behest of the FCC, because the cell systems we use today were never designed for hand off calls over vast regions at the speed of a plane, and a phone at cruise altitude could light up a thousand towers. This prohibition was always an FCC issue, and never much of a concern for the FAA.
WIFI would be just as likely to interfere as would cellular radio.
Yet wifi on the planes is already available on many flights.
With wifi, you can do voip. Almost every Android phone has Voip (internet calling) built in.
As of this time, none of the airlines allowing WIFI let you use any Voice app. They claim bandwidth issues.
However voice does not take as much bandwidth as most people think.
I suspect there is still some security concerns with allowing voice communications that are the real hold up here, I doubt there are any real technological issues in providing the bandwidth. On the other hand they do allow text chat apps, as well as email.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If your phone can connect to a tower 32,000’ away including all the scattering that buildings cause then there's no reason why it couldn't just because the signal is travelling in a more perpendicular direction with no obstacles.
Cellular antennas are optimized to receive signals in a horizontal "circle" parallel to the ground, so reception above/below a tower is poor.
If you're in the air, you're not connecting to a tower 32,000' below you, you're connecting to a whole bunch of towers 32,000' feet below you and 20+ miles away. Cellular signals will actually go pretty far with clear LOS, although the phone has to up the signal strength quite a bit, which is why a phone with a cellular antenna left on in-flight will burn a ton of battery.
paintball