At some point you can potentially grab a faint cell signal, but cell towers are a few hundred feet in the air, pointed down, they are not pointed up to reach 40k feet. I have flown on a private plane NUMEROUS times at 25k feet, and only once was able to send a text message, I was never able to make a cell phone call. I'm glad at least someone on this thread was smart enough to know this because I was getting pretty irate reading through the comments. The 'calls' the FCC is talking about allowing would be while taxi-ing(sp?), taking off, and landing. Basically anything below 1000 ft. I think you can all live through that.
Slashdot Mirror
At some point you can potentially grab a faint cell signal, but cell towers are a few hundred feet in the air, pointed down, they are not pointed up to reach 40k feet. I have flown on a private plane NUMEROUS times at 25k feet, and only once was able to send a text message, I was never able to make a cell phone call. I'm glad at least someone on this thread was smart enough to know this because I was getting pretty irate reading through the comments. The 'calls' the FCC is talking about allowing would be while taxi-ing(sp?), taking off, and landing. Basically anything below 1000 ft. I think you can all live through that.