New in-flight cell phone technology on the horizon

Having already infiltrated cars, buses and trains, cell phones could soon overrun airplanes if technology being separately developed in the U.S. and Europe receives regulatory approval and, equally important, support from the major airlines.

AirCell has developed an in-flight communication system that will allow passengers to use their own cell phones in the air to call anywhere. Last week the company received a patent for the technology, which it expects to install and demonstrate in aircraft early next year, the Louisville, Colo.-based manufacturer said in a statement.

In Europe, a consortium of companies and other organizations is developing a system to connect cell phones and other portable devices in aircraft cabins using several wireless access technologies. The technology could be available as early as 2005.

The consortium, WirelessCabin (www.wirelesscabin.com), is being coordinated by the German aerospace center Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) and consists of a diverse cross-section of companies and organizations, including Airbus Deutschland, Ericsson Telecomunicazioni, ESYS PLC, Inmarsat, KID-Systeme, Siemens Austria, TriaGnoSys and the University of Bradford. The group is being partially funded by the European Union.

Numerous passengers, accustomed to making phone calls or sending e-mail messages from their cars or other forms of mass transportation, are showing growing interest in technology that will also allow them to communicate with their own devices in the air. And some airlines would like to respond to that demand as soon as they can.

"Passengers, especially our business class travelers, keep asking us when a technology will be available that will let them continue using their mobile handsets in the air as they are accustomed to on the ground," said Ulf Ingnäs, director of in-flight product management at Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) in Stockholm, Sweden. "We keep telling them that there's nothing available yet but we're confident there will be in the near future."

In April, SAS announced a policy for allowing passengers during flights to use all mobile phone functions, such as calendars, address books and reading e-mail, that require no signal transmission. To do so, passengers require phones equipped with a flight-safe mode, which essentially prevents a handset from sending or receiving signals required to make phone calls. Nokia with its 9210i Communicator and Sony Ericsson with its P800 smart phone are among the first manufacturers to offer handsets with the flight-safe feature.

Already Boeing and Tenzing Communications have begun to deploy systems that allow passengers to use their notebook computers and other portable computer devices to send and fetch e-mail and surf the Web.

But no company or group has yet to implement technology that will allow travelers to use their own mobile phones to make calls in-flight. That could soon change in the U.S. if AirCell successfully completes rigorous testing of its in-flight communications technology to ensure noninterference with terrestrial cell phone networks and aircraft's communication and navigation systems.