TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Cellphones in Flight? This Means War!

Re: Cellphones in Flight? This Means War!

Scott Dorsey (kludge@panix.com)
30 Mar 2006 11:36:06 -0500

Steven Lichter <Die@spammers.com> wrote:

> This is all we need, have you ever been in a checkout line with a moron
> on their cell phone talking so loud that you can hear them next into
> next year or the driver on a cell phone who forgets where they are and
> pulls in front of you, does not move at a light, or just plain stops in
> the middle of the street and talks, these morons need to be shot, and
> that is what is going to happen if cell phones are allowed on planes in
> flight, or worse, if so many are on that it jams the navigation system
> and brings the plane down, which a study proves it does.

The system being proposed involves a cell "tower" itself which is
inside the aircraft. This does a number of things... first of all it
causes the individual cell phones to drop down to the lowest possible
power, and secondly it allows all communications to them to be routed
through a single path.

This eliminates a lot of the emission problems with cellphones causing
induced noise in avionics. It also eliminates a lot of the cellphone
infrastructure problems with one cell being able to talk to a dozen or
more towers at the same time.

But, it requires a continuous link from the "tower" in the plane to a
ground station through which calls are routed.

Technically, I think the system is a good idea and it solves pretty
much all of the technical issues that make cell phone use in planes a
bad idea. Socially, I think it's terrible and the only good thing
about being on an airliner is being free of people yammering on
cellphones. But technical solutions to social problems never work.

--scott
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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