Widebodyeng,
I have tell you that the FCC is known to emit politically based rules without sound technical basis, and the sentence you highlighted, is so meaningless that will make laugh any telecommunication engineer.
Moreover, a mobile phone cannot 'lock' to more than one station at time, but even if it did, it would not 'take up precious lines'. Not even in earlier days. A line (a whole channel in analog systems, portion of domain in case of digital) is taken up only when a cellphone makes a call.
Note that I'm not defending the use of cellphones on airplanes (at least liners) but merely explaining you why mobile handset cannot do harm to the network no matter the topology they are in relation to multiple towers.
Telecommunications happens to be a science well developed, funded and researched just like aviation so even if it doesn't have an authoritive answer on the matter of interfercences to avionics, please believe me when I say that such a silly, easily solvable problem, if ever existed, is no more today.
Last edited by el !; 2nd Aug 2006 at 11:28.