On my flight back from Twin Falls, ID a few weeks ago I sat next to a man who was despondent when he had to turn off his cell phone. He was so upset by this temporary detachment from his phone that he actually turned it back on after the drink cart came by and proceeded to make a call.

My initial thought was, "this must be serious." I then proceeded to eves drop. It didn't take long to recognize the trivality of his call.

This got me to thinking about cell phone use on aircrafts. Before I get into it, let's put all the cards on the table (as I see it).

• Common courtesy
• Breaks the law (FCC prohibits the use of cell phones since 1991)
• Potential interference with aircraft instrumentation (fitting with FCC rules)
• $$ - something must be inhibiting cell phone, wifi... to be used on planes without restriction

I'm going to ignore the courtesy issue. Even if legal and feasible, I don't think courtesy would ever legislate or dictate whether people will use their phone on a plane (see text messaging while in a one-to-one conversation).

So in researching the law and the actual legitimacy of the law, here's what I found:

The interference fear is originally based on a concept called frequency re-use. In short, the idea is that the frequencies used by cell phones on land is contained by the terrestrial boundries (buildings, trees, mountains...) and the signal disapates as it reaches these boundries. As a result, the same frequency can be used by multiple phones without cross-interference. Calls from phones in the air wouldn't have these limitations and therefore a call could cause interference or noise.

This makes me wonder if the interference concern is more from the standpoint of the mobile phone companies or the airlines. Hmmm.

The FCC rules based in 1991 have been reviewed by a committee called Special Committee 202 (SC-202). In late 2004 the FCC recommended relaxing or lifting the ban. From what I can tell, the ban has not been lifted because the FAA has the final say. It looks like if cell phones are ever allowed it would be through the use of PICO cells. PICO cells would seemingly eliminate the risk of frequency re-use because each aircraft would have their own hub (this would also seem to conveniently give the ability to make the use of cellphone a value add for the airlines [$$]).

Originally, I was going to name my blog "Leaking Memory" because I have a notoriously spotty memory for details. Blog posts like this are going to be an attempt to retain some of my leaky memories after I research something curious.