Ryanair First Airline With Cell Service

Most of that is industry propoganda. Planes are subject to EM fields far worse than electronic devices at that altitude (soloar radiation, etc.). Airplanes are designed such that all the systems are sheilded from interference and a game boy or a cell phone does not cause enough disturbance to bring down an entire plane.

What is really happening is that when one is flying over land, the number of cell sites a mobile unit are far greater than what a mobile unit sees when it is closer to the ground. This will essentially confuse the network because there are too many cell cites to a handset to choose from. If you have enough people doing this, it can wreak havoc on the network. The "cell phones bring down planes" line is a convenient cover story for carriers to protect their networks.