A whiff of common sense breaks out at the Federal Communications Commission: it has terminated a proceeding that looked into whether or not people should be allowed to use their cell phones on airplanes.
According to regulators, there is “insufficient technical information” to determine whether or not the use of cell phones in the air would interfere with aircraft systems, though the FCC seems more concerned about the potential for interference to cell networks themselves, as phones transition from cell to cell at 400+ miles per hour, while 30,000+ feet off the ground. It’s not something the cell system is really set up to do.
Interestingly, a large amount of the public record of the now-concluded proceeding came from people who abhorred the thought of listening to people yakking at the top of their lungs for hours on end while trapped in a hurtling steel tube with them. The notion of allowing some semblance of wi-fi Internet access on planes, however, appears to still be under consideration, though the interference issue on that front is also unresolved.
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