FCC To Consider Cellphone Use On Planes 183
aitikin writes "The Federal Communications Commission is expected to propose allowing passengers to use their cellphones on airplanes. While phone use would still be restricted during takeoff and landing, the proposal would lift an FCC ban on airborne calls and cellular data use by passengers once a flight reaches 10,000 feet. From the article: 'The move would lift a regulatory hurdle, but any use of cellphones on planes would still have to be approved by the airlines, which have said they would approach the issue cautiously due to strong objections from their customers. Airlines would have to install equipment in their planes that would communicate with cellphone towers on the ground.'"
Re:Here comes the flood.... (Score:5, Informative)
Here comes the flood of people complaining about having to listen to other people talking...
Even though it's really no different to people talking to the person next to them
Except people tend to talk louder on the phone than in person... and you're trapped next them for the next n hours.
Put the phone down. It won't hurt. I promise.
Re:Here comes the flood.... (Score:5, Informative)
Or not
“It’s very emotional in the United States,” said Benoit Debains, the chief executive of OnAir. He insisted that the anxiety was overblown. For one thing, he and other industry executives said, standard cabin noise covers up much conversational noise, yet people with cellphones pressed to their ears in that environment somehow do not feel the need to speak louder to compensate.
“I remember on the first flight we did, we asked one guy, ‘What do you think about using the phone for voice in the cabin?’ He said he was against it. But we said, ‘You know, the guy across from you has been using his phone for the last five minutes.’ ”
Emirates executives have even heard from skeptical pilots and flight attendants who mistakenly believed “the system was on but nobody was using it” on a particular flight, he said. “And I was able to go back to them and say, well 63 people had their phones on, and there were 22 phone calls and 68 messages.”
He added, “They were thinking it must be broken because they don’t hear anybody using it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/technology/29phones.html
Hearing half a conversation (Score:5, Informative)
Even though it's really no different to people talking to the person next to them
Hearing half a conversation is worse [cornell.edu] than hearing a whole conversation.