And there was me thinking it was all so simple, the common sense thing about 'phones and flying I mean. I thought CAA had approved certain airlines who use an onboard relay point, and charge the earth for it, to allow pax to use a 'phone on those aircraft so fitted, that way they wouldn't try to connect to overlapping earth bound 'nodes,' and, because the onboard relay point is so close, the power output is very low. I was under the impression that another HMG department who looks after the airwaves doesn't want the mobile 'phone relay cells on the ground, outside the aircraft, to be overloaded and overtax the system, so doesn't want them accessed from the third dimension (above) where several cells can be 'seen' simultaneously; of course that wouldn't happen in an aircraft where the phone has already made its contract with the onboard relay point.
Now, I don't own one of these new fangled things, but I think I understand that some 'apps' seem to work independently of the outside world and don't need to 'talk' to anything outside the iphone, but others do. I suppose the temptation (when flying) could be to rely too much on the iphone and its 'apps' and ignore the engineering principles behind how and whether it needs to connect to a network, possibly leading to inadvertent network connection and overload (one phone connecting to several cells simultaneously when airborne.) This could possibly lead to the poor mobile phone companies needing to install more cells, which will mean more cost, higher bills and so on.
Am I wrong, is it really so simple?
Last edited by beardy; 11th Sep 2009 at 17:23.