DaButt
Thursday 3rd May 2012 8:20pm
14,722 posts
Quote: billwill @ May 3 2012, 8:58 PM BST
If you had an iPad with 3G, would you notice easily, if when the plane's wifi was switched off, it automatically reverted to 3G (which AFAICS would be against the FCC law if you were still airborne).
After climbing to 10,000 feet the pilot announces that approved devices can be powered on. As the aircraft descends through 10,000 feet passengers are instructed to turn off their devices, so it doesn't really matter.
Cell phones and WiFi aren't really all that much of a hazard to aircraft and I've heard that the regulations will be relaxed in the future. The biggest problem is that the cellular phone network is accustomed to dealing with slow-moving devices that are only within range of a handful of towers. At 35,000 feet your phone could connect to hundreds or thousands of towers and I suppose it could cause some problems. Imagine if a television or radio station placed their antenna 7 miles in the air: their signal would step all over faraway stations.