Do you want to pay an extra £50 to sit in the "No mobile" section sir?

Point 1: We're in Europe so their mobiles, not cell phones. Come on El Reg, try and keep up

Point 2: I was told by a pilot that you can pick up a normal GSM signal from a plane as you're only about, what, 9km, in a straight, uninterrupted, line above the antenna.

So, do they block these normal signals, or have I been lied to?

Please also add that option in the Tube!

I always wanted to go mental...

Strange how quickly one can decide that a premium to secure cellphone-free flights can become desirable.

A sticker on a window saying "Quiet Coach" and a reduced likelyhood of dropping like a brick does wonders for the little grey cells decision making processes.

Aircraft Loo seem the right size for a quiet booth "Are you finished in there? Some of us are deserate to make a call"

... to say: "Hi, I'm on a plane."

Sadly, most users won't be Reg-reading business travellers "who need to communicate wherever they are." They will be drunken bling-laden guttersnipes in tracksuits and trainers shouting inane drivel into their mobes as they head off to the Costa Chav for a well-earned break from cashing their Giros and selling one another crack.

What arsehole came up with this bright idea? Sorry, dumb question - the money-men and marketing morons.

Another reason not to waste time going on a flight (hanging about in T5, waiting weeks for your baggage to arrive) and adding to global warming!

"I'm on the plane, no the plane [stutter] no the plane ..." [click burr]

Planes are for just in time drop shipments of the latest gadgets not for people to go to other countries to get mugged, pick up an STI or enhance their skin cancer [you can do that at home].

PS: Please get rid of those stupid animated adverts, they alone are causing a bigger carbon footprint.

8-]

> Point 2: I was told by a pilot that you can pick up a normal GSM signal from a plane as you're only about, what, 9km, in a straight, uninterrupted, line above the antenna.

I'd be very surprised if this was the case - generally the antennas are directional to save wasting power - the direction will generally be aimed down since that's where the people are. Shooting a signal 9km upwards would be a big waste of power (=> money), with no benefit in terms of revenue generated.

When they did their studies on cell phones interfering with airplane controls, and found them to be safe, did they also look into the effects of cell phone jammers? Somehow, I imagine allowing one is going to provoke the use of the other...

Did someone sneak through an extra frequency auction while I wasn't looking?

1800 band seems more likely...

Because you'll be in international airspace will it be okay to use a mobile jammer? Not that I have one of course, that would be illegal, I'm just curious.

"In-flight mobile phone services can be a very interesting new service" except that phones in planes have been around for years, indeed I've even used seat phone myself once. Damn expensive it was too.

For me the plane has always been the last vestige of peace and non-interruptableness by work. Long may it be so.

"As well as a picocell, planes will carry a network control unit to ensure phones can only use the picocell, cutting highpower transmissions by phones" - seems like somehow they intend to block these signals, indeed. Although I have no idea how - scrambling other frequencies?

"PS: Please get rid of those stupid animated adverts, they alone are causing a bigger carbon footprint."

Adverts? What adverts?

@ Sceptical Bastard - sad but, I'm sure, true.

@ Anonymous coward - my sentiments exactly. One place where people are actually forced to look for the 'off' button; I'm sick of people STILL complaining about getting calls at all hours and then looking blank when you ask them why they don't just switch it off at night. That was about the only appeal of flights for me - a few hours of peace, read a nice book, and so forth.

"However, if consumers receive shock phone bills, the service will not take off.”

Take off? TAKE OFF! Geddit?

Ahem. Sorry about that.

"Adverts? What adverts"

Those annoying adverts that get filtered out by my home proxy server but get left in when I browse from work 8-(

Firstly, yes, it is perfectly possible currently to connect to a ground based cell when your mobile is on in the air. At Richard who talks about directional aerials - you need to look again at your aerial theory. Most directional aerials in common use tend to have pretty big side-nodes which mean that some signal is leaking both up and down. The advantage of up is that there is very little in the way to interfere. The key reasons the mobile companies don't want you using your mobile without a pico-cell in the plane are 2 fold. One technical reason (I'll explain in a second), and one purely financial one - they can charge a big premium for airborne mobile usage.

The technical reason is that a mobile in use in the air typically can pick up signals from a lot of ground based nodes. Usually 10s of nodes, sometimes even more. Remember there is nothing in the way to attenuate the signal other than air. The nodes aren't designed for this, and quite often you get repeated hand-offs between nodes which taxes the infrastructure. With lots of people doing it, you can actually cause overload on nodes and result in major outages.

A simple way to increase the number of air rage incidents. Great thinking EU!

I take a walking stick with me when I fly because I have limited mobility. Now I can see more uses for it...

"Shut that bloody phone off or I'll wrap this round your bloody throat!"

I should also mention that the Mossad use the mobile phone as a weapon - they've killed terrorists before now by blowing their head apart thanks to explosive components being planted in mobiles. So they can be made to explode.

Mine's the coat saying "Shut that f**king phone off!"

There are polite STFU cards available on Lifehack at http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/be-quiet-already.html

From: http://www.etsi.org/WebSite/document/Technologies/ETSI-WP4_GSM_onboard.pdf

---

"The purpose of the NCU is to stop terminals onboard from connecting to ground networks. To ensure this, it raises the RF noise floor inside the cabin to a level that effectively covers the signals from the ground base stations. The signal generated by the NCU is a band-limited white noise and, in the European configuration, it will blanket the following bands:

• GSM- and WCDMA/UMTS-900 downlink (921 – 960 MHz)

• GSM- and WCDMA/UMTS-1800 downlink (1805 – 1880 MHz)

• UMTS UTRA-FDD 2GHz downlink (2110 – 2170 MHz)

• CDMA-450/FLASH-OFDM downlink (460 – 470 MHz)

The unit will not transmit below 3000m. The power level of its emissions will depend on the frequency band and on the altitude (increased altitude means decreased signal strength received in the aircraft from terrestrial networks).

---

i.e. it will essentially jam all ground-based signals so the phone only sees the arm-and-a-leg priced onboard network.

We can only hope that a combination of extortionate rates and air-rage threats will kill this at birth.

stopped to think that some business users, the ones who actaully do the work as opposed to the pansies who only like to look important, may WELCOME being incommunicado,

Not to mention other passengers enjoying the, relative, quiet?

Is there to be no peace?

Possible IgNobel paper?

"Study on the operating characteristics of a bluetooth headset when communicating with a cellphone that has been inserted anally by a fellow passenger, including safety considerations of Li-Ion batteries within the body."?

Errr, aren't you on the same plane as these pikey bastards you refer to? Am I suppose to believe you're the odd one out in this case, or more likely as not just have a superior opinion of yourselves when surrounded by these lifeforms, aka your kinfolk?!

So you can't take a bottle of water on board but you can take a proven bomb trigger?

According to Telsis (who manufacture routers and associated software to support the short message service aka text messaging 80% of messages sent from person to person can be delivered immediately which is their main putch for their intelligent SMS routing product.

I always turn my phone off at night (and strictly control who has my number) but I wonder how long is it going to be before Nokia, SonyEricsson, LG, whoever do away with the on/off switch on the insistence of network operators who don't want to pay out for storage hardware.

Think I 'll get rid of it if that happens or just simply take out the battery which is of course an option unless you are a mug and bought an Apple ICon sorry IPhone.

One system jams all other frequencies in the appropriate bands except the slot being used by the on-board picocell. Concept being to deny the phone the opportunity to communicate with "home-network" cells outside the aircraft.

The nature of the jamming doesn't involve as much average power as you might think.

Open question: How would you go about making sure the low-IQ yuppies have actually turned OFF their mobile on the approach for landing? The picocell won't be allowed to operate on approach, so if a phone is left on, it will ramp up the power in an attempt to contact another base station.

GSM signals are done on transmitters that have a natural downward angle built into them. (the ones at the top aren't as powerful as the ones at the bottom)

The logic being they will be high up to avoid obstacle, so need to slightly point down to get the best use of power. So not sure you can get it straight up.

Any sad person that can't "be out of contact" for a couple of hours while they fly needs to take some serious looks at their life and relax.

Having mobiles in planes is fine, it is the take off and landing part that has them interfering with on-board systems, wave interference and all that. However you give chav's the right to use them and they will then argue during the landing that they should be able to use them.

Air rage will go through the roof after this, how many people get drunk or stressed on planes, then add in a gobby chav with too much alcohol talking none stop about their tan, bloke, drunken goings on....

Oh well... Here's to the first person to have their mobile shoved somewhere unpleasant.

As I distinctly heard either my or someone else's blackberry ring on a flight the day.........

Indeed.

I travel quite a lot for work, and my top travel annoyance is noisy fellow passengers such as gits with MP3 players and crap headphones or volume on 10, or the people to incredibly important that they must make 4 calls between landing and gate arrival (@AMS a few months ago).

I'm suddenly thinking this is a green initiative by Viv: I would be loathe to travel anywhere in a plane full of calling idiots, so would reduce my (considerable) travel since no doubt my employer would be unwilling to shell out any sort of premium for quite-class.

Amusing thought: those that can afford the rates will be mostly in the front, thereby cancelling quite a lot of the benefit of business/first class for the other travellers there :)

Maybe it's escaped your notice but we've been able to take phones on board for as long as phones have existed.

Ok, so mobiles are cleared for use because they don't directly interfere with the aircraft severly enough to cause a crash. I disagree. Only because the effect will be secondary, under the following scenarios:

- Chav fires up his blingtastic brain fryer

- He wipes off drool, and commences inane, loud, "I'm on the plane!" conversation

10 mins into said conversation one of two effects happens:

- my cranium detonates with rage, and rapid decompression ensues, loss of all hands

or...

- I go postal, bludgen said chav into mush with my bare hands, and exit via nearest door to get some (permanent) peace and quiet. Rapid decompression ensues, loss of all hands, etc etc

Root cause is the mobile call, but will the black box pick that up?

"Viviane Reding, the EU's Telecoms Commissioner, said: “In-flight mobile phone services can be a very interesting new service especially for those business travellers who need to be ready to communicate wherever they are, wherever they go."

FFS.... How bloody pretentious is that? What precious plonker is going to think that they have so much import?

That'll be the new flying fad for passengers ......... Spot the self-important wally with the Napoleon/EU Telecoms Commissioner complex.

Nice one Viv, keep taking the tablets, the meds haven't kicked in yet.

I remember making calls on trans atalntic flights about 13 years ago - it was not cheap but I needed to blag a lift from a mate as the flight was late and I'd have been stranded in London for the night.

Ironicly the cost of the phone calls I made worked out at about £100 if I remember correctly.

I did get my lift and had about 100 miles to travel, back then a taxi would likely have been about the same amount.

I'm not 100% sure that was amanfrommars because I understood the whole message!

Anyway, "phone services can be a very interesting new service". A new use of the word interesting I hadn't come across before. Yes phone calls will be insufferable, but what will really get me will be the person texting his/her mates/boyfriend/girlfriend with the keypad tones switched on.

on a trip from Boston to D.C. once because my phone rang in flight and I answered it out of habit. I've also held conversations while skirting around D.C. in small charter planes (you know the one's where the pilots aren't a bunch of union douche bags)

It's a flat out lie that mobile phones do not work in the sky.

Hey, that rhymes!

..... that the system defeats the "I'm ever so important" Bast**dBerry-wielding, "got to check how much they've missed me" IDIOTS that seem to think that their lump of crud "isn't a mobile phone" and that they're therefore entitled to use it as soon as there are no roof-tops between the undercarriage and the ground?

“I also call on airlines and operators to create the right conditions on board aircraft to ensure that those who want to use in-flight communication services do not disturb other passengers,"

I vote for having special "mobile permitted" seating, located well away from everyone else. On top of the fuselage seems like as good a place as any, the selfish f**kers can yell as loud as they want to out there. :)

"Because you'll be in international airspace will it be okay to use a mobile jammer?"

You're not, though. At least on US-based carriers, I believe US law applies on board, or at least that's what I've heard. Besides, how likely is it that you'll get a suspicious-looking box of electronics and batteries with multiple antennae and a couple of buttons on it through security without getting a complimentary anal exam?

"For me the plane has always been the last vestige of peace and non-interruptableness by work. Long may it be so."

I find the "off" button on the phone works just as effectively, and is a hell of a lot cheaper than flying. If I'm not on-call, I don't need to be reachable whether I'm in the air or not.

So the recent advances in the EU stopping us all gettting ripped off when abroad do not apply since they are airbourne telcos.

Sounds like the EU is listening to the airlines law department, since in every other way the airline must register in their country of origin, why not apply that as to the telco side!!! Then we can be protected by a law that is not re-actionary for a change.

If the spokesdroid really thinks "In-flight mobile phone services can be a very interesting new service especially for those business travellers who need to be ready to communicate wherever they are, wherever they go."

Then put the picocell in £20K wanker-class and a nice thick bulkhead between those tossers and the rest of us travelling as veal.

(Unless of course I'm one day invited to turn left on entering the plane, in which case I want the upgrade to be accompanied by the sort of Zen-like calm needed to answer questions like 'what is the sound of one mobe being rammed up an EU commissioner?')

mobes work fine in aircraft, i've had perfectly good comms on them in helicopters (lynx, sea king) and fixed wing (jetstream, herkybirds). it's more bollocks like it interferes with hospital equipment, to fleece you some more.

Um... thoe Blackberries have something called "Disable all connections" or something like that, so they can perfectly use the BB as long as they did disable connections.

Of course, there's always the retarded guy who fires up his Blackberry without shutting down that option! Important notice: you've got to disable the "cellphone network" *before* entering the plane/turning of the BB, otherwise it WILL try to contact the network long before you're able to disable that option!

I'm just waiting for some Darwin Awards-candidate to forget turning off his mobile and getting a flight to crash. That'll be the end of inflight mobiles for a looooong time...

"I find the "off" button on the phone works just as effectively, and is a hell of a lot cheaper than flying. If I'm not on-call, I don't need to be reachable whether I'm in the air or not."

Some poor buggers don't have that option, and are expected to have their professional 'phone on all the time. Sucks to be them, admittedly, but there you go.

Rarely bother switching my phone off on planes and always enjoy tracking the various 'welcome to XYZ operator' messages (often multiple from the same one) that have found their way to my phone - usually from every country flown over en route.

Motivation was plain laziness but now I learn that such behaviour may cause multiple node hand-off confusion and potential outages. So if we really make an effort and leave all phones on we could leave a trail of broken networks under every flight path..

Ah! A tribune springs up to defend the plebeius against the patrician! How Roman! How noble!

No, mate, I won't be on a plane with the pikies: I haven't had to travel by air for years and have no plans to. Even if I did, I'd leave the mobe at home - partly because I spend much of the day on the phone in the office and the last thing I want is calls when I'm away from my desk, partly because I'm too mean to pay roving tarriffs, partly because I don't imagine myself important enough to be indespensable to my colleagues.

As to being the odd one out, I wouldn't be: anyone with basic good manners either keeps their mobe switched off on public transport or at least or speaks quietly when they use it. It's the loudmouthed moronic minority I was satirising - a group you seem keen to champion. Chavs may be your kinfolk but they certainly aren't mine.

Your defence of pig-ignorant mobe-abusing gobshites is laudably philanthropic and democratic. Power to the underclass! Right on!

PS: I am being facetious (it's like sarcastic only more supercilious) just as I was in my original comment. So c'mon - smile!

That was the last touch still required. Flying buses are finally here in toto.

Vulture was flying and talking on the mobile at the same time, see what happened...

...looks like there might be a big call for voluntary body cavity search requests at arrival.

Used to be Smoking/Non-smoking.

Now:

Phone/no-phone

Small crying children/"Adults"

Fat People/Thin people

Weak Bladder/Strong Bladder

Blowhard talker/Quiet Person

Ugly member of opposite sex/Drop dead beautiful super model

Now if I could get all my options correct (*SIGH*)

All the more reason to buy a phone jammer.

Didn't some the guys on that crashed into The Pentagon, on 9/11 phone home "Hi honey we've been hi-jacked!" Or are they allowed in US airspace already?

Bugger!...

They wont let me on board wearing my tin foil hat :(

Not to mention the gas mask with the organo-phosphate+particulate filters... (to filter out the poisenous bleed air from the unfiltered engines, - you might notice on landing when the engines go into reverse just as you come into land the cabin fills with a fine haze- that's it).

(think storm trooper look and your almost there, also includes the heavy breathing, with the clicks as the valves open and close;)

without the foil i'm certainy toast, oh yeah i'm gonna feel it all the way....

hmmm wonder if you'd be able to smuggle a small cell jammer on in personal luggage...

meeeeei... a terorist, naaaahh i just want a nice quiet 4 hour flight without some pillock screamming: "HELLOOO''' I'M ON THE PLANE, HELLOOOO CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS CALL IS £5 A MINUTE!!! YEAH... YEAH.... GOTTA GO... OUT OF CREDIT!... "

[the fact i'm 6'4+ dressed in white making hissy-clicking noises when breathing, scare small children and upset DHS morons cos the suits very taser proof(if not bullet proof if i can source the kevlar for the body armour) (shame, i can't carry the laser/taser blaster as well ;p)]

HEY i know, lets all dress up as stormtroopers and get on as fancy dress,

the DHS boys will be real pleased with a full flight of star wars fans in full costume.

(as the outfits can be fitted out to include refreshemnts 'built in to the armour/helmets', in-suit com's/entertainment systems(iPods;) ) (seriously are you gonna bother the guy in the armour with the anoying 'chi-chi-chi-chi' coming from his helmet and at least the conversation hes having via the built in iPhone will be somewhat muffled)

Mines the black crinkly foil lined imperial cape......

illuminatus;p

...ear plugs.

..before the combined signal from 200 phones brings a plane down? BTW, that 777 that pancaked at Heathrow could have been affected by all the passengers getting their phones out just before it landed...

We cant smoke, we cant get plastered, we have to put up with screaming children and NOW we will have to put up with annoying twats yelling into their phones as well.

Remind me why i want to fly again?

In terms of the IDIOTS that seem to think that their lump of crud "isn't a mobile phone", the ones I've seen seem so scared of landing that they take to talking to their invisible friends, while using their Bast**dBerries as comfort blankets - so unless they are making calls using the unpublished "Telepathy Bearer Service", I can only imagine that they're actually phoning Daniel B for advice on how to disable the RF.

Whatever happened to a phone-kill solution for use on aircraft (I think from Motorola - several years ago)? I seem to recall that it used Bluetooth, so presumably this would rely on Bluetooth being available and enabled.

You got that right!

Just my tuppenny worth, but I could say that about mobiles in the street, in the shops, on the bus, on the train, etc, etc, ............., and soon to be on the underground in which case people will have to yell to hear themselves above the racket the train makes.

"There is nothing in the way to attenuate the signal other than air."

Inverse square law.

For those of you already practicing your air rage in anticipation of a jerk in the next seat yammering pointlessly on his cell phone, a reminder that it is considered good manners to join in the conversation. After all it is in a public space and loud enough to be heard with no effort at all, hence bystanders' participation must be welcome:

"Oh, go on, tell him what you *really* think."

"No, that's not right, it should be *three* teaspoons of vanilla, and one hour at 325 Fahrenheit."

"What did you say your underwear size is?"

"Hey, tell 'em about the flock of dinosaurs we're going through right now."

And for those whose employers expect 24/7 connectivity: just turn the damned thing off anyway unless you've been given on-call pay. In the old days, I worked at a couple of jobs where the guys with pagers for the weekend got quarter time pay for every hour they were on call. Surely, if your services are so valuable, what's a little money between friends?

Perhaps that's a fine attitude for Poms who can ride the train or even swim to the mainland, but for those of us with a bit more water around us (and deep water at that), there is not much option. If you want to travel anywhere from NZ or Oz, you pretty much have to fly.

Those 13 hour trans pacific flights are unlikely to get any worse with cell phones. If you've ever tried to get some kip while three half-deaf/half-pissed 60 year old American bikers spend the whole trip yarning and trying to outdo eachother at full volume about their Harleys, their crashes, their ex girlfriends, and their youth in the row behind you, punctuating eachother's sentences with "Getthefuckouttahere! Nofuckinway!" you'd actually hope for one of them to get a call just to interrupt the flow.

For any cattle class trip, earplugs are an absolute must. Industrial level earmuffs are even better.

Hi its me, yeah i'm on the plane, hello, hello, yeah can you here me? Hi yeah sorry i'm on the plane, your blipping out, you've gone all digital! Hello its me yeah, mate i'm on the plane now, yeah, i was in the airport before, i'll call you when we are over Paris.

Hi Mate yeah I'm over Paris! But I'm still on the UK network isn't that great like...

Duty Free: Here mate, i need 3 off those power packs for me mobile, yeah - bloody airline they charge for power in the seat.

Wow - my mobile social network irc , annoy everyone else chat client just pinged 172 people on the plane . .how cool is that .. not!

Sharon, i'll put it on vibrate only and you put it where you like it then i'll call you every 5 minutes alright..

Select a seat now (extra €7)

Select mobile Zone (€ 11)

(join our mobile flight network and save $$$$ on calls because we make it impossible for you to roam on any other network)

So now as you power nap off some idiot next to you will invite you into his conversation just magic.

"Why not send a text and add €.50c carbon offset stop someone in a developing country being able to do this tax."

100 mobile on a BAE 146 all working gives as much power as 5 microwave ovens on nuke.

for sale - Hugo Boss Faraday Suit

Ach well, there goes the last ounce of peace on sleazyjet..

"Didn't some the guys on that crashed into The Pentagon, on 9/11 phone home "Hi honey we've been hi-jacked!" Or are they allowed in US airspace already?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airfone

All this talk of "people who cant be away from there phones". My Father, as a Doctor, can manage it, why cant they? The people you work for dont own your life. As far as I am concirned if im not on call or at work, the can F off.

As for getting on a plane to go on Holiday, im off to buy a Blackbird (Bike not spy Jet) and Ill race you to any city in western europe...Ill be the one sat in the bar with a beer and a smile on my face whilst your still strugling with passport drones.

Yes, mobiles work on airliners under certain conditions, no they're absolutely not allowed under FAA regulations. Some passengers used the Airfone as Jared mentioned above, some used mobiles.

I don't think that the passengers on the 4 planes were particularly concerned with adhering to FAA rules about phone use.

Penguin because, like me after this ruling, it won't fly.