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Mobile phones given the go ahead on flights

Friday 28 Mar 2008 1:55pm

Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, has given the go-ahead for mobile phones to be used on flights - as long as the UK and European aviation authorities give the OK too. The way that it would work would be similar to on the ground, except that passenger's mobile phones would connect to an on-board base stations which would deal with routing communications (calls and texts) to the ground via a satellite link. The base station on the plane would be required to be switched off when the plane was below 3000 metres or during landing or take-off. Passengers would be able to receive and send text messages and also make and receive calls. Billing for calls or texts would be done as normal - with the airlines potentially charging a premium for the service. James Fremantle from the Air Transport Users Council said [quote] ""[Airlines] should . . . put into place measures that would alleviate some of the main problems that passengers might have - by only letting passengers use their phones at certain times, [or] if somebody is continually using it and annoying passengers, give the cabin crew the power to ask them to stop". In a 2006 study, 45% of passengers thought that hearing another passenger make a mobile phone call on a flights would be the second most annoying thing they could think of on a flight - just behind the sounds of crying children. Ofcom stated that at this stage it is giving the go-ahead for 2G services and if this rollout is successful then there is no reason why it couldn't be rolled out for 3G services in the future.

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