Quote:
Originally Posted by dizbuster
Can phones be used at such heights ? Not too sure on that myself.
Even so, I don't think too many people will use them for long haul, as a call would incur "roaming fees", i.e. you would only be in your providers airspace for a short period and then you would be out of range. Imagine making a call halfway over the English channel which started off in your UK provider's range, after around 30 minutes you could have passed over France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany etc so which provider would you using then and wouldn't a call disconnect when the provider changed ? I think that's it's all a pile of crap and won't be an issue because of this.
Most ordinary folk will do it once, receive the bill (20 minutes pay roaming charges is not cheap !!) and then think twice about doing it again.
It will affect the premium cabins a lot more than economy, with the latter probably only using their phones when coming in to land to say "Hi, we're back !!" or "I'd like to book a cab please..."
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The planes will be equipped with pico cells or a hub. The cell will communicate with satellites or dedicated towers on the ground. In the US I have read that only 6 land towers will be required for all communication over the continent and 200 miles beyond.
Roaming cost is estimated to be less than $1.99 per minute, which is about the same I paid when I got my first cell phone (I actually paid more if you factor inflation). I have also read about flat fees based on flight duration, but forget the cost.
At similar rates in-flight phones have been available for a long time and while they were used from time to time, most just didn't. Not so much because of cost (I think). Delta Airlines used to have free calls to their reservation center or to purchase from the in-flight magazine. Even when the call was free I only used the phones once or twice.