On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:21:33 -0700, David Brooks wrote:

"Greg Copeland" wrote in message
news
Recentingly, in another thread, cell phones and planes came up. I
thought others might be interested in these links.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1568024,00.asp
http://wirelesscabin.com/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...art.html?pg=12

The general theory on modern cell phones in flight, goes like this:
The FCC also has a ban because when you're in flight, you're always at
least 6-8 miles away from the nearest cell tower. You end up communicating
with too many towers and bogging down the network. One or two such
calls...

Here's a needed clarification. Are there still problems when the phone isn't
making a call, but just sitting there listening to the network? I know such
a phone is continuously acquiring the next tower down the road. Would it be
true that the problem with passive phones is the same as with active ones,
but to a lesser extent?

-- David Brooks

Well, first let me say that I am NOT a subject matter expert on this, so
please, take my comments with a grain of salt.

When you speak of active versus passive, do you mean a phone being
actively used for calling versus a phone simply turned on? I'll assume
that's what you mean. A phone that is not actively particpating in a call is
still periodically attempting to locate it's best tower. It may be
sharing additional tidbits as well, I'm not sure. Nonetheless, if it's
transmitting, it's causing these problems. Like you, I suspect that it is
causing problems, just to a lessor extent.

If you have a phone, like mine, which periodically blinks, that blink
means it just transmitted. AFAIK, it's the fact that the phone is
transmitting, especially at 5-watts, that is causing some of the problems,
without regard for the content that is being transmitted. The fact that
you're traveling at a high rate of speed, probably causes more frequent
tower contacts (and tower hops) from your phone, however, that's purely
speculation on my part.