Cell phone regulation on airlines?

Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.

As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

By installing the tower in the aircraft you are only a few hundred
feet from the tower (at the most). The Cell phones will get an
excellent signal from it and will drop to the lowest transmit power
setting, Thus the interference with towers on the ground should be
minimal.

I am not an expert on these, I am just repeating how it was explained
to me.

Brian

"Morgans" wrote in message ...
"Bob Chilcoat" wrote in message
...
I noticed on the evening news the other night that someone is trying to
get
a modular mobile "cell tower" approved that would be installed in
commercial
aircraft so that passengers can use their own mobile phones. It will be
interesting to see how the FCC and FAA handle this one.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


Still won't work. The frequency the cell in the air is on, will be hitting
dozens of towers on the ground, making them unable to use that frequency for
other users on the land.

Brian Case wrote:


As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

The cellular phone does use an adaptive power control (it's not tied to
the signal strength bar).

The problem is that even at mimimal power, if you're sitting close to
the window, you can be heard equally well by a large number of cells
over the system. There's nothing magic that they can do to stop this
short of rf shielding the aircraft windows somehow.

Brian Case wrote:


As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

The cellular phone does use an adaptive power control (it's not tied to
the signal strength bar).

The problem is that even at mimimal power, if you're sitting close to
the window, you can be heard equally well by a large number of cells
over the system. There's nothing magic that they can do to stop this
short of rf shielding the aircraft windows somehow.

"Brian Case" wrote in message
om...
Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.

As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

By installing the tower in the aircraft you are only a few hundred
feet from the tower (at the most). The Cell phones will get an
excellent signal from it and will drop to the lowest transmit power
setting, Thus the interference with towers on the ground should be
minimal.

I am not an expert on these, I am just repeating how it was explained
to me.

Brian
I could see the possibilities of strong enough signal not reaching the
ground to cause problems, but......

Which company (Of the multitudes) will you have to belong to, to get your
phone to work? How will the plane's system communicate with the ground? By
cell tower? g
--
Jim in NC


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"Brian Case" wrote in message
om...
Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.

As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

By installing the tower in the aircraft you are only a few hundred
feet from the tower (at the most). The Cell phones will get an
excellent signal from it and will drop to the lowest transmit power
setting, Thus the interference with towers on the ground should be
minimal.

I am not an expert on these, I am just repeating how it was explained
to me.

Brian
I could see the possibilities of strong enough signal not reaching the
ground to cause problems, but......

Which company (Of the multitudes) will you have to belong to, to get your
phone to work? How will the plane's system communicate with the ground? By
cell tower? g
--
Jim in NC


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.774 / Virus Database: 521 - Release Date: 10/7/2004

The only thing that I see wrong with this is that the cell "tower" needs
to connect to the wired phone system. We know that it can't be
hardwired, that would be one hell of a long cable! So, as the "tower"
needs to transmit and receive (transceiver) from other transceivers on
the ground that are hardwired to the phone system. You can put the
ground transceivers on a different frequency pairs, but that's a whole
new world wide system!

Brian Case wrote:

Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.

As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

By installing the tower in the aircraft you are only a few hundred
feet from the tower (at the most). The Cell phones will get an
excellent signal from it and will drop to the lowest transmit power
setting, Thus the interference with towers on the ground should be
minimal.

I am not an expert on these, I am just repeating how it was explained
to me.

Brian

"Morgans" wrote in message ...

"Bob Chilcoat" wrote in message
...

I noticed on the evening news the other night that someone is trying to

get

a modular mobile "cell tower" approved that would be installed in

commercial

aircraft so that passengers can use their own mobile phones. It will be
interesting to see how the FCC and FAA handle this one.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


Still won't work. The frequency the cell in the air is on, will be hitting
dozens of towers on the ground, making them unable to use that frequency for
other users on the land.

The only thing that I see wrong with this is that the cell "tower" needs
to connect to the wired phone system. We know that it can't be
hardwired, that would be one hell of a long cable! So, as the "tower"
needs to transmit and receive (transceiver) from other transceivers on
the ground that are hardwired to the phone system. You can put the
ground transceivers on a different frequency pairs, but that's a whole
new world wide system!

Brian Case wrote:

Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.

As I understand it that signal bar you see on you Cell phone is
dictates how much power the cell phone uses to transmit. So the closer
you are to the tower the less power it uses to transmit. This is why
you phone batteries probably last longer in town than the do out in
the boondocks.

By installing the tower in the aircraft you are only a few hundred
feet from the tower (at the most). The Cell phones will get an
excellent signal from it and will drop to the lowest transmit power
setting, Thus the interference with towers on the ground should be
minimal.

I am not an expert on these, I am just repeating how it was explained
to me.

Brian

"Morgans" wrote in message ...

"Bob Chilcoat" wrote in message
...

I noticed on the evening news the other night that someone is trying to

get

a modular mobile "cell tower" approved that would be installed in

commercial

aircraft so that passengers can use their own mobile phones. It will be
interesting to see how the FCC and FAA handle this one.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


Still won't work. The frequency the cell in the air is on, will be hitting
dozens of towers on the ground, making them unable to use that frequency for
other users on the land.

DaveC wrote:

Cell phone usage is restricted on all domestic commercial flights by the FAA,
so the flight attendant keeps telling me.

I seem to recall that this wasn't so, early in cellular history. Weren't we
able to use cell phones on flights, long ago?

Is cell phone usage also restricted on private jets, etc. for similar
reasons?

So my question... what is the technical reason for restriction of cell phone
us on commercial flights? Is this reason valid, technically? Or is it simply
an excuse to force anyone who needs to make a call to use the airline's
on-board phones (and pay their outrageous rates)?

The origin of the ban was due to concerns about cellphone transmissions
interfering with onboard avionics. This is more likely to be a concern with older
a/c. There is no hard data that I know of that substantiates the concern. There
is some anecdotal evidence of interference though.

As another poster has mentioned, cellphones don't work well at altitude.

Both Boeing and Airbus are now working on systems to enable airborne use of
cellphones.


Graham

DaveC wrote:

Cell phone usage is restricted on all domestic commercial flights by the FAA,
so the flight attendant keeps telling me.

I seem to recall that this wasn't so, early in cellular history. Weren't we
able to use cell phones on flights, long ago?

Is cell phone usage also restricted on private jets, etc. for similar
reasons?

So my question... what is the technical reason for restriction of cell phone
us on commercial flights? Is this reason valid, technically? Or is it simply
an excuse to force anyone who needs to make a call to use the airline's
on-board phones (and pay their outrageous rates)?

The origin of the ban was due to concerns about cellphone transmissions
interfering with onboard avionics. This is more likely to be a concern with older
a/c. There is no hard data that I know of that substantiates the concern. There
is some anecdotal evidence of interference though.

As another poster has mentioned, cellphones don't work well at altitude.

Both Boeing and Airbus are now working on systems to enable airborne use of
cellphones.


Graham

Joseph wrote:

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 11:38:10 -0700, DaveC wrote:

Cell phone usage is restricted on all domestic commercial flights by the FAA,
so the flight attendant keeps telling me.

I seem to recall that this wasn't so, early in cellular history. Weren't we
able to use cell phones on flights, long ago?

Is cell phone usage also restricted on private jets, etc. for similar
reasons?

Restriction of cell phones from planes is not due to the interference
to avionics, but is more of concern that it will interfere with
land-based communications. When you're up at a height and you attempt
to use your phone you are hitting a whole lot of cell sites as once
and if lots of people did this it would make a real mess of land-based
cellular service. So it's more of an FCC mandate than it is of the
FAA.

I thought that the base station antenna patterns pretty much ignore any signal
greater than a few ( maybe ~10 ) degrees above the horizon.


Graham