REFLECTOR:Cell phones and airplanes

[Bernard Despins]

Given the ratio of people using cell phones on the ground versus the 
potential number of people that would use them from private aircraft, 
you have to wonder how much of an impact on bandwidth this would really 
have.  With the small number of private aircraft flying compared to all 
the cell phones out there, I don't think it's a very big problem.

Bernard

P.S. Cell phone use in the air in Canada is perfectly legal.  Bandwidth 
be damned!

Mike Pollock wrote:

>Actually, the problem is a technical one.  Since a lot of cell phones today
>(Sprint, etc.) use CDMA technology (a technology that uses one frequency but
>multiple digital codes from a specific cell cluster), the problem has to do
>with the power being received at each cell site.  CDMA technology causes the
>base (tower) to send a code to the receiver (cellphone) to keep the receive
>power being received at the tower from the cellphone at a constant level.
>When using a CDMA phone in a plane, the speed and altitude of the plane
>cause several cells to try to lock on to the signal from the phone and each
>cell tries to send compensation signals to the cellphone.  This ties up
>bandwidth and we don't want you to do that because it causes other phone
>users to not be able to get through (ever had that problem).  Satellite
>phones do not have this problem.
>
>Michael Pollock
>Network Integration Lab
>MCI Communications Corp.
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