For crackberries this is just the beginning of the beginning…for the rest of us it’s the beginning of the end

The proposed system utilizes an on-board base station in the plane which communicates with passengers’ own handsets. The base station – called a pico cell – is low power and creates a network area big enough to encompass the cabin of the plane. The base station routes phone traffic to a satellite, which is in turn connected to mobile networks on the ground. A network control unit on the plane is used to ensure that mobiles in the plane do not connect to any base stations on the ground. It blocks the signal from the ground so that phones cannot connect and remain in an idle state.

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How In-flight Mobile Phone Services Work