Originally posted by paul34 At the speed you travel on the plane, you can't lock on to any one tower (I've tried sneaking my phone out of my pocket and trying to get it to connect ), so you couldn't use it anyway.
i think paul34 is right, because you are traveling to fast to actually lock onto a tower to make a call or something. although when u are landing and taking off u should be going slow enough to make calls. anyways i went on a cruise a while ago and i think i was at least 20miles or so offshore and i had the ability to make and receive calls the whole time until i got down to mexico where i only got emergency calls only msg...
Last July, American Airline and Qualcomm did a demo of a cellular base station on-board an airplane that was connected to the ground based system. This made in-flight calls possible.
The main problem with in-flight calling is that cell transmission equipment isn't designed to broadcast up. Some signal gets some altitude....but little. There may be some difference to this in HEAVILY towered areas such as Huston, New York, L.A., etc.
But apparently, the in-flight calling ban lift will be brought up for the first time on Wednesday at the FAA meeting. FAA has said that extensive research will have to be done. The results report isn't due until 2006. We may not see a lift in this regulation until 2007....possible 2008.....unless they re-vamp their schedule.
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They're going to be using the repeater system which utilizes a satellite which in turn connects to a base station. But expect heavy charges for this (cruise lines are implementing similar systems), so really, I doubt anyone will still use phones.
It'll be like those phones in the headset (the credit-card ones). You can talk on them if you want, but you have to pay a lot of $$.
), so you couldn't use it anyway.
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