Techotic

The European Commission in its infinite wisdom has given its approval to allow airline passengers flying within continental Europe to use their cell phones once in the air. It is expected that carriers will start to offer this service as early as next month.

Therefore, we can now look forward to the teenager sat next to us on a three hour flight never taking a breath while telling his friends exactly where he is over Europe, for the duration of the flight.
Direct calls will not be practice via regular earth bound cells so the aircraft will utilize pico cells, on board the planes that will be capable of communicating via satellite with the regular services.

There is no indication as to what these calls will cost, but it’s a good bet that they will be considerably more expensive than regular cell calls. It seems obvious that this new set up is bound to cause disruption and annoyance to many passengers who are perhaps trying top watch a movie or just relax and read the newspaper.

[via bbc news]