Congress Moves to Formalize Ban on In-Flight Calling

A bill is heading to the US House of Representatives to create a legal ban on in-flight calls: The current ban is regulatory, with the FCC disallowing calls using 850 MHz equipment and the FAA not certifying airworthiness for mobile calls (and not having been asked to do such by the industry, as far as I know). But that’s not enough for Congress, and perhaps rightly so.

The HANG UP Act (Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace, cute) will make the regulatory actions statutory. Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio has been pushing such a move to prevent airlines from moving forward on such services despite the overwhelming distaste by American travelers. In Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, there appears to be less concern, and we’ll see how it works out when calling starts to become widely available on RyanAir and other airlines by year’s end.

AirCell’s near-term launch with American Airlines of its GoGo Internet service will use various measures, including crew involvement, to prevent in-flight VoIP.

To enable in-flight calling, OnAir and others place a low-power picocell in an aircraft which handles all the frequencies that could be used by mobile phones. The phones associate with the picocell, keeping their power output low. The picocell could be used to prevent calls entirely, too.

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