In-flight calling given lukewarm reception
'It sounds like I'm talking to a small robot'
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
Air France has started to allow passengers to make voice calls on its flights, though the first passengers are unimpressed by the quality of the service.
OnAir's service works by having a low-power base station on the plane to connect calls via satellite. This means calls suffer the lag associated with satellite communications, and are limited - at the moment only six can be made simultaneously.
Connecting calls over a satellite is easy enough. The clever bit is keeping signalling to a minimum. Mobile phones constantly communicate with their home network even when not involved in a call, and if those communications were all routed over the expensive satellite link then the system would quickly become uneconomical. So the on-plane base station can also pretend to be the home network, only using the satellite connection when really necessary - such as when a mobile is switched on in the plane.
The New York Times reports that Air France passengers were able to make calls, though most had to make a couple of attempts and incoming calls failed to connect at all.
But even when a call was connected the quality was far from ideal, with one passenger being told: "It sounds like I'm talking to a small robot" - which is a concern as bad sound quality may result in passengers raising their voices, and thus generating exactly the kind of nuisance that has prompted Lufthansa to say it won't be deploying the technology.
No such concerns at Ryanair. The cheap flight specialist's head of communications says: "We are not concerned about the noise because our cabins have never been quiet places. People are constantly coming up and down the aisles selling scratch cards or food and we believe there is a market for this." ®
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
COMMENTS
Petrol Stations
Using a mobile phone at a petrol station wont spark off petrol fumes, but, according to someone I spoke to working in a petrol station, I was told the risk is if the person drops the phone and the battery sparks, or blows up, or something. So if you use your phone while filling up, dont drop it ok.
Talking to a small robot
So it sounded like R2-D2 or Twiki from Buck Rogers then?
Would prob sound more interesting than what the airborne mobile user was actually saying in those cases.
Lets hope this tech flops so that mobiles are confined to the ground as I have enough at work with people's mobiles constantly going off.
Switching Phone OFF
I remember going into a building that requested phones to be switched off, and I couldn't find the off button. So I reduced the volume to minimum.
Quote "So, I guess the question is why don't they do that?
- They make bombs out of chapatti flour not C4.
- How much C4 can you get in a phone anyway?- End Quote" - same amount you can get in the heel of a shoe.
Actually I think the detectors would find it the moment you walked through the X-Ray machines, and the surprised look on your face of "Whose is that, it's not mine" would help to stop you taking it on board. Also most airlines will not switch on the you can make a call device until the plane is well airborne - just incase of problems.
Brainiac - a pseudo british science programme "exploded" the petrol station myth some time ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBkPT-j8PNg).
Ryanair joins British Airways in list of airways I will not fly with.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
