Smartphones to be inescapable, even at 40,000 feet Folk soon need not look up from their screens when boarding aircraft and wandering the aisles thanks to an alliance formed by OneWeb and Airbus to bring 5G roaming to the skies. OneWeb, which hopes to launch the first of some 900 satellites into low Earth orbit this year aboard a Russian Soyuz-ST from the Korou Cosmodrome in …
"How can there be room?"
Space is big. Really really big.
As to the main topic: I'm ok with this as long as we get cellular data (at reasonable rates) and as long as anyone using the speakerphone is forced to take the rest of the call outside. Stop copying the cretins on 'reality' TV you human waste of oxygen!
> "However, the data slinger promises a campaign from August that will see a satellite launch every three weeks until it reaches the 900 target."
> So that would be, uhm, in about 52 years time!
Looking at Wikipedia (yes i know), the first launch is 10 satalites, and subsequent ones are 32 each.
So not that long.
I guess the roaming will be in band Z and cost us £5/min even if we are flying from LHR to GLA.
I'll carry on flying with my phone set to 'Airplane Mode'. At the moment being up in the air is the one place left to escape from other people's whining/warbling/moaning on the phone to their dear loved one.
Then there is the inevitable air rage following a few dozen 'Hello darling, I'm on the plane' calls.
Can't we just have on place where 'the bane of our lives' is silent?
My initial though was does anyone actually *need* this.
I already have to endure enough discomfort when I fly in Economy. The slightly sadistic side of my hopes that aircraft will be shielded in some way so that this feature only works in business class - the important business types can have the facility to allow them to conduct their business whilst in flight, whilst no extra disturbance in cattle class.
So, right now the airlines tell us that we have to disable our cellular connections. We all know that we don't have to for air safety, as they claim, but they tell us to do it. Planes fly at 10 km or so up. Cell signals can go for 10 km. 5G networks are being OKed in planes. Why can't we use the ground-based cell towers? True, we'd have to see if there's a good way to deal with the constant connecting and disconnecting because we're flying really fast and will have to switch towers a lot, but it has to be cheaper than putting up the giant satellite junkyard. Right?
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