EU To Allow 3G and 4G Connections On Planes 106
jfruh writes "In America we're celebrating the fact that we don't have to stow our Kindles during takeoff and landing anymore, but the EU is going a step further and not requiring passengers to switch their phones to "airplane" mode anymore. If you're on an airplane with a Network Control Unit that regulate cellular connections, you can text and make calls over standard 3G and 4G networks. You'll want to watch out for roaming charges, though, especially if you're on a flight crossing national borders."
Only for business (Score:2)
One word:
Roaming.
As long as that is no settled, nobody in his right mind will use it if sending a selfie costs 3-5€ depending on your camera.
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Keeping them down does not mean you shouldn't watch out for them. They are still fairly high for most people.
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I don't think you have any idea what the roaming fees are. They're almost as cheap as italian phone plans, which are some of the cheapest in the world.
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It already appears to not apply on ferries between EU countries. Annoyingly even when you can stil reach land based towers the ferries local repeater wins and will try to fleece you.
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It's also typically buried under layers of menus (for good reason, too - think of the amount of people whose phones would "stop working" otherwise)
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In the EU there are laws keeping roaming charges down. Often they are less than the cost to use your own phone in your own country!
How is this even going to work though? A plane at 20,000 feet (which is relatively low actually) can see thousands of towers. I am surprised the cell companies haven't complained that this screws with their networks. Only on the very short flights (15-20 minutes) such as Milwaukee to Chicago would the plane be low enough (~5000ft) and see few enough towers for it to even possibly work. Combine this with the metal tube of the airplane and it seems like a technical impossibility.
Honestly it seems like
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It's only 1.5 hours by car, and, based on what Google maps says, they also have a train that runs 6 times a day. By the time you get to the airport, go through security,
Unfortunately for people living in Milwaukee, if you want to fly someplace like New York or LA or Orlando to see Mickey, you usually can't fly there directly. You go to the closest hub for your chosen airline, which for United at least is Chicago Orchard Field (ORD). From there you transfer to something going closer to where you want. And when you come back, you will probably go through ORD and catch a plane to Milwaukee.
It is probably faster and more convenient to drive to the airport in Milwaukee and go
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It will probably be a local cell on the plane that relays through a satellite connection. Like they do WiFi now.
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In the EU there are laws keeping roaming charges down. Often they are less than the cost to use your own phone in your own country!
If the situation is like that with cruise ships, it may not save you. Vessels large enough to justify them commonly have picocells (or maybe just small cells, I'm not up with where the distinction breaks down exactly), operated as a sort of 'private label' thing by the operator of the vessel or somebody they have an agreement with. And damn do they get expensive, fast.
There have been a few tragicomic cases in the news about poor bastards whose phones roamed onto such towers when they were wandering aroun
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In the EU there are laws keeping roaming charges down. Often they are less than the cost to use your own phone in your own country!
I've gone throughout the EU with my phone and everytime I leave my home country my bill spikes! Roaming charges in Europe are still ridiculous even with "roaming agreeements" and despite both your home and "foreign" carrier having the same corpotate overlord.
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I don't know about Europe, but my US T-Mobile plan recently has apparently extended my data plan to free international by default.
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Painfully slow is superior to outrageously expensive and non-urgent.
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I don't know about Europe, but my US T-Mobile plan recently has apparently extended my data plan to free international by default.
"Apparently" is the operative word here. Before you rely on the claim in their ad, check with T-Mobile about your specific plan. I saw the ad and thought "yay!" Then I went online to see which plans it applied to, and of course mine was not one of the few that it does.
And if your plan is covered, keep in mind that when you turn your phone on "over there", it will register your US number and you'll be "able" to get all your calls forwarded from the US -- at the international roaming rate.
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I received a specific text to my phone telling me that I now had free international data, but I agree that if I go abroad, I need to read up on it first. I have no plans to use it, I just find it convenient to know that if I were "over there" and really needed to hop on my email without a hotspot, I could.
I don't answer my phone domestically, I certainly have no plans to do so on foreign soil.
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No. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only saving grace is that a flight from LIsbon to Warsaw (which is about the extreme edge of a flight within the EU) is only 3.5 hours. Most of the time you're not going to be stuck listening to someone loudly talking in a language you don't speak for more than a couple of hours.
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Dublin to Istanbul?
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I know Iceland is not yet part of the EU, but I thought Turkey was. It turns out I was wrong about the latter, so please substitute Istanbul with whatever the city with an international airport in Cyprus is.
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Geography is not altered by your political affiliations.
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Dublin to Istanbul?
Saint Denis (Reunion) to Paris, just over 11 hours.
(But within the continent, I'd guess somewhere in Finland to somewhere in Portugal, or Cyprus to Scotland.)
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Helsinki to southern Spain takes about 6:30. If you start from one of the northern Swedish or Finnish cities you can add another hour or two of in-flight time, but you'd need to transfer on the way.
And of course, if you don't restrict yourself to the contiguous continental EU you can get much longer flight times than that.
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Yeah, as if flying wasn't annoying enough I now have to listen to the person next to me talk on the phone for the entire flight? Roaming chargers will negate some of that I'm sure, but given that EU has also suggested that those charges should be drastically lowered as well... yeeeah, what can possibly go wrong?
I envision a whole new web game - guess the other side of the conversation. Record you seat mate's half of the call, and let imaginations run wild...
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Some trains in Germany have "no cell phone" quiet zones. Maybe airlines could introduce them, as well?
But, given the current business models of airlines at the moment, they will charge extra for a quiet zone!
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I just hope that there are more ways to charge your stuff. I have seen advertisers already making the possibility to charge your stuff available at airports.
The last time I went on a nice, new plane (one of BA's Airbuses, I think) there were USB ports in the entertainment thing. The idea was apparently to look at your holiday snaps, but it charged my phone just fine :)
(This was about a year ago, so it's probably a bit more widespread -- I haven't taken a flight over ~3 hours on a quality airline since then.)
Bad reasearch? (Score:1)
"You'll want to watch out for roaming charges, though, especially if you're on a flight crossing national borders."
I don't know where this comes form but carriers will have to install jammmers to disable communication with ground towers. They'll need their own station inside the aircraft which in turn connects via sattelite. So you'll likely pay the fee the aircraft carrier decides on.
Well crap... (Score:2)
Between the long lines at security, stress, and being fondled and stripped before entry, the only nice thing that was left about flying was the lack of self-important people yakking on their phones throughout the flight... until now.
(hopefully the roaming charges will make absolutely sure nobody does voice calling, but that will depend on how much they charge).
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No no no... this is the EU doing this, not the US. This means that, after twelve long years, we FINALLY have something about which WE can feel a smug sense of superiority over someone else's airline travel.
Actually, my description of the above is from the EU ;-)
What, you thought we were better? Pretty much everyone here mimicked the US when they introduced their procedure, primarily because they insisted that anyone flying to the USA had to go through this, and it was cheaper to just subject everyone to it then make a whole separate line (and hire separate people) for those traveling to the US.
I pretty much avoid flying in Europe whenever I can. Driving is so much nicer (even if more expensive), plus I can ta
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I took the TGV from Brussels to Paris in September. If I could do that in Canada (it'll never happen on the west coast, but I can dream), I'd never fly again.
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You chose the right direction.
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Yes, I've heard great things about the trains in Europe, however they don't go where I want to, and quite frankly I like driving.
What I would not mind is an extension of what Germany does. There you can drive your car onto a train, and it will do the long boring slog for you (which currently I have to do on highways), and you can drive off at your destination.
However the above is only in Germany (And in Italy, but apparently it doesn't work that well there, and is horrendously expensive), and the high speed
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being fondled and stripped before entry
. . . just think of it as "TSA Foreplay" . . .
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What's the point? (Score:2)
Yeah I've been using my phone during take off and landing my ENTIRE life. I hide the electronic and the second the flight attendants sit down the device comes back out. I'm listening to music. What's the point of of all this hubbub? I can't even get a signal and if I leave my phone on. It will keep trying to find a signal and will run itself out of battery faster.
Another question that baffles me, how were the people on the 9/11 flights able to use their cell phones during flight? Yeah they have the in sea
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah I've been using my phone during take off and landing my ENTIRE life. I hide the electronic and the second the flight attendants sit down the device comes back out. I'm listening to music. What's the point of of all this hubbub? I can't even get a signal and if I leave my phone on. It will keep trying to find a signal and will run itself out of battery faster.
Another question that baffles me, how were the people on the 9/11 flights able to use their cell phones during flight? Yeah they have the in seat phones, but i still remember hearing people say, "Yeah they used their phones!" Fun fact that everyone seems to forget.
Getting a signal on the plane is not the problem, you have unobstructed line-of-sight to a shitload of cells. The problem is that you mess everything up for the people on the ground by communicating with so many cells...
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The cell network was never designed with the idea that one phone was going to hit an entire metropolitan area's cell towers.
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What's the point of of all this hubbub? I can't even get a signal and if I leave my phone on. It will keep trying to find a signal and will run itself out of battery faster.
The airplanes in this article have repeaters.
Another question that baffles me, how were the people on the 9/11 flights able to use their cell phones during flight? Yeah they have the in seat phones, but i still remember hearing people say, "Yeah they used their phones!" Fun fact that everyone seems to forget.
They were not flying at a proper altitude.
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Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Another question that baffles me, how were the people on the 9/11 flights able to use their cell phones during flight? Yeah they have the in seat phones, but i still remember hearing people say, "Yeah they used their phones!" Fun fact that everyone seems to forget.
And you saw how that flight ended?? DO YOU REALLY WANT THAT AGAIN?!
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Something about snakes?
The point: hear safety announcements (Score:3)
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You may be explaining verbatim what your source said, but it is bullshit.
Anything that requires action on my part is going to be pretty obvious just by watching everyone putting on their lifejackets and/or trying to put their head in their crotch. I'm pretty sure I'll notice.
"What if everyone is on their headphones?"
Look at the flight at 30,000 feet. Is everyone on their headphones? No. Enough people are there with someone else they are talking do that their actions will cause others to take notice.
Let's no
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Plus they don't want relatively hard, dense and non-draggy objects bouncing around the cabin in the event of a bad landing, hitting dirty air etc.
I don't understand (Score:2, Interesting)
I honestly thought that one of the reason why they have the no electronics during take off and landing was to ensure that people are paying attention to what's going on in case of emergencies.
Hell I've had stewardesses ask me (very nicely) to put away a physical textbook I was reading.
But yeah, please keep the ban on cell phone use for making calls, in fact ban any type of audio conferencing. Last thing I want is an obnoxious asshole blabbing away really loudly next to me.
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Re:Cell towers (Score:5, Informative)
These systems work on the premise of noise generators that blot out the external signals and a new carrier is presented just above the noise level that commands mobile phones to idle their transmitters down. In fact, one might say this causes *less* interference as you don't have a bunch of phones blasting away RF energy inside the cabin.
Cost Benefit Analysis Needed... (Score:3, Interesting)
The real question is what will be the cost model for UMTS/LTE vs In-Cabin WiFi as each has a entirely different set of data protocols and are routed differently once they reach the ground network.
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But think of the stream coming off the satellite as one big pipe. So that's a known cost based on overall usage. But then it's routed on the ground different ways. Since GPRS/GSM/UMTS/LTE/etc... is a mobile protocol, you're now having to route to another network or if you're the provide
Phoney issue (Score:4, Informative)
Sat next to a guy once who taught jet pilots for a living. He had an awesome flight tracker running on his laptop.
Apparently rules against phones being on during flight isn't an FAA thing, it's an FCC thing. You pass from cell tower to cell tower so fast it confuses and stresses the system.
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According to TFA, this is a separate system that doesn't use your carrier's towers. To me it sounds no different than offering WiFi on the flight (which is relayed to the wider internet using a dedicated system such as satellite):
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Well, it does let you place ordinary phone calls without Skype or other software. It should all be "just data" but the phones and pricing plans are still set up to make a big deal out of the difference.
I would assume, in fact, that they intend to charge you for this, as with the WiFi (since the new hardware and the satellite connection aren't free, after all, and their whole industry model is about upcharging these days). Which would be odd, since once people see that talking on phones is allowed, they're g
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Which would be odd, since once people see that talking on phones is allowed, they're going to just take out their phones and try to connect to the ground towers to circumvent the cost. I have no idea how well that will work.
The on-board cell is fitted with jammers that prevent detecting the ground towers at all. This is to prevent phones from boosting power to reach ground.
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That makes sense. I'm not sure how one does such a thing without interfering with your own operations, but I can imagine that it's possible. Thanks.
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Apparently rules against phones being on during flight isn't an FAA thing, it's an FCC thing. You pass from cell tower to cell tower so fast it confuses and stresses the system.
More to the point: Not only is the summary wrong, the TFA is wrong too. A different (and somewhat contrasting) Press Release from the European Aviation Safety Agency [europa.eu] clearly states:
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) will publish by the end of November 2013 guidance which will extend to all phases of flight the possibility to use personal electronic devices (PED) such as tablets, smartphones, e-readers and mp3 players as long as the devices are in ‘Flight Mode’ or ‘Airplane Mode
Very misleading (Score:1)
This is very misleading.
This is not about regulations. You can't just use your phone on any flight and connect directly to the ground. You'll never be allowed to do that, for technical reasons.
This is about planes with onboard cell towers, which are rare, although RyanAir offered this starting 2009. So the EU has allowed it for quite a while. Nothing new here.
Also, roaming doesn't change when you cross borders, because you're not roaming on any one country's network. You're roaming on the airline's network,
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Also you will still be required to switch to Airplane Mode on take-off and landing, so basically the summary hasn't got anything right.
Already Here in US - In Plane Internet (Score:2)
We already have the ability to make calls via VoIP, Facetime, etc. Anything internet based. The vast majority of mainline domestic planes have internet and do not restrict most voice protocols. The only saving grace has been internet became so popular on planes that services like GoGo quickly ran into bandwidth and latency issues (Most planes share a single 3G gateway). That will change as upgrades happen.
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Think of how long it has taken to get GPS based ILS put in place and approved even tho the practices and technologies have been around for decades.
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There are roaming cost limits in Europe. This means a maximum of 0.09 EUR per SMS. Not sure what the limits are for national calls, nor what it is for data, but the limits are reasonable within Europe.
I wonder if they will make exceptions depending on destination or if they find another way to add some extra cost to it.
Why should you have roaming charges at all in the EU? I can go from JFK to SFO and never pay a dime in roaming charges and text all I want.,/P>
Cue the US vs EU cell phone market pricing flame war...
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Why should you have roaming charges at all in the EU?
Because they can (different countries). Hence the need for legislation to force the phone companies.
The limits are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulations#Common_limits [wikipedia.org] -- they go down every few years. Next year they will introduce the ability to choose another provider for making calls while roaming, which should lead to decent competition and a big reduction in prices.
Some networks do allow free international roaming where they are part of a multinational. My network allow
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And different companies. I suspect that's really a larger part of the reason. In the US, don't you pay extra if your own provider is unreachable in some particular spot and your phone switches to one of the others?
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And different companies. I suspect that's really a larger part of the reason. In the US, don't you pay extra if your own provider is unreachable in some particular spot and your phone switches to one of the others?
In general no. Most have agreements in place to roam on each other's network, although they may limit data roam and do get upset if all you do is roam.
I'LL SEE IF I CAN FIND SOMEWHERE... (Score:2)
...WITH BETTER RECEPTION!
*Sound of a cabin door being opened*
Summary has it completely wrong, surprise surprise (Score:3)
In America we're celebrating the fact that we don't have to stow our Kindles during takeoff and landing anymore, but the EU is going a step further and not requiring passengers to switch their phones to "airplane" mode anymore.
You'll still need to switch to airplane mode during take-off and landing: "For safety reasons, these services are only available at altitudes above 3,000 meters, the Commission added."
You'll want to watch out for roaming charges, though, especially if you're on a flight crossing national borders.
You won't be connecting to ground networks. You'll be connecting to the plane's onboard network - you may well be charged at "roaming" rates but "crossing national borders" will have nothing to do with it.
From the article:
Aircraft offering the service have a Network Control Unit on board that works like a jammer that prevents mobile devices from connecting to and interfering with ground-based systems. They ensure they connect only to an Aircraft Base Station, which is the antenna to which mobile devices connect and runs as a cable through the cabin, it added.