G.R. Patterson III wrote:

Brian Case wrote:

Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.


Well, it would work well, but not if they actually used the cellular frequencies
(AMPS). If they installed a PCS processor in the plane, modern PCS phones would
communicate with it and not fall back on the AMPS frequencies.

It would be a real can of worms. If everybody had a GSM phone in the
US it might be doable. But every carrier these days tends to market
a multimode phone that bounces between CDMA, old style TDMA, analog AMPS,
GSM, and a couple of proprietary schemes like iDEN.

It's going to have to be a "only [insert carrier here]" phones work onboard
United's flights.

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 12:16:13 -0400, Ron Natalie
wrote:

G.R. Patterson III wrote:

Brian Case wrote:

Actually it could work very well, and I have seen this proposal from
several different sources. The Idea is to install a low power cell
phone tower into the airliner.


Well, it would work well, but not if they actually used the cellular frequencies
(AMPS). If they installed a PCS processor in the plane, modern PCS phones would
communicate with it and not fall back on the AMPS frequencies.

It would be a real can of worms. If everybody had a GSM phone in the
US it might be doable. But every carrier these days tends to market
a multimode phone that bounces between CDMA, old style TDMA, analog AMPS,
GSM, and a couple of proprietary schemes like iDEN.

Given that it's no big deal these days to make a multi-mode,
multi-band phone, why do you think it'd be so tough to make a
multi-mode, multi-band base station in the A/C? Certainly would be
easier if all phones were CDMA, of course. ;-)

Klein

Klein wrote:

Given that it's no big deal these days to make a multi-mode,
multi-band phone, why do you think it'd be so tough to make a
multi-mode, multi-band base station in the A/C? Certainly would be
easier if all phones were CDMA, of course. ;-)

That would be fine if there were some industry cooperation with the
people planning on offering the airborne service. But the plethora
of incompatible modulation schemes now sort of demonstrates that this
level of cooperation isn't likely .