Why do the Federal Aviation Administration and the FCC think they can ease restrictions?
For one, there’s a lot of interest among cell phone operators to sell calls on board a flight. Just as they are on trains, in cars, buses, subways and on ferries, an operator’s audience is trapped for anywhere from a few minutes to–in a transcontinental flight–12 hours. Verizon Airfone, for instance, which operates seat-back phones on scores of planes, has indicated that in order to meet the needs of consumers on commercial aircraft, it plans solutions that would use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, which are both wireless Internet technologies found in a growing number of cell phones. What’s changed since 1991? Since the ban went into effect, cellular infrastructure has changed greatly, and promising technical innovations have taken place in areas of power control, as well as signal filter and antenna design. The advent of smart antennas, which are much more efficient at broadcasting signals, mean cell phones can operate on the very low-power threshold the FCC has tentatively set. Pico Cells em
