FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - pax used cell phone

Feb 16, 2011 | 2:35 am

#6

c_9

Join Date: Feb 2011

Location: YYZ

Programs: Former AC 35K, he said through tears from the back of the aircraft...

Posts: 570

Quote:

Originally Posted by CdnFlier

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.1+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.285 Mobile Safari/534.1+)

The problem generally isn't flight safety but that cell phones in the air really screw with ground based cell towers. Since you are so high up your cell phone can 'see' a number of different towers and apparently they switch towers very quickly (because of your height and speed). I believe in the states the rule is governed by the FCC rather than the FAA.

It's the reason that the pico cells being added to planes to allow for in air texting/calling is okay. While your phone is on it locks onto the 'cell tower' on the plane rather than a ground station.

I can confirm this: A friend who built the new Bell/Telus HSPA network explained it exactly that way to me. The rapid switching terrorizes the networks themselves, plus can trigger the fraud detectors at the phone companies and shut you down.

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