Air France to Offer In-Flight Mobile Calling
...and if the quality is not good enough...
The person in front of you or next to you will not mind at all. 🙄
10,000 feet = about 2 miles. 30,000 feet, where most commercial airliners fly, is more like 6 miles.
Cell towers have a max range of around 3 miles under ideal circumstances, but are usually installed every mile or so in order to provide the best "real world" coverage.
I suspect the quality issue for Air France (and others who are piloting the same type of service) is that the relay to satellite and back will create a noticeable lag in the conversation.
Roadkill said:
Those planes were below 10,000 feet.
10,000 feet = about 2 miles. 30,000 feet, where most commercial airliners fly, is more like 6 miles.
Cell towers have a max range of around 3 miles under ideal circumstances, but are usually installed every mile or so in order to provide the best "real world" coverage.
I suspect the quality issue for Air France (and others who are piloting the same type of service) is that the relay to satellite and back will create a noticeable lag in the conversation.
Not really a big issue, cruise ships have been using mircocells (or whatever their version of it is called) for years, and they just resend via sat. Of course at an expense.
An aircraft's hull is really great at blocking radiowaves. Its a big tube of metal. For best radio results, hold the radiating device 6" or less from the window (try to hold it against) for the 800MHz band. For some reason, over 6" and it cuts off to nothing.
AMPS will work mostly at any altitude, especially great at 30k-40k feet. There was also a 19.2kbps data service called "CDPD" (now since discontinued) that works wonders. Line of sight at this altitude is about 150-300 miles, and not 3-6 miles, as your only radiation pattern is directly out the window shooting towards the horizon.
AMPS gets a ...
(continues)
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