Next year, if you are flying onboard an Airbus aircraft there is a good chance that the “no smoking” signs have been already replaced by a “no mobiles” to prevent usage during take-off and landing. In fact, for the first time ever, airline passengers will be allowed to make phone calls from their own mobile during a flight.
Air France is starting next July - after equipment certification is completed by June - a six-month trial (in a single A318 Airbus aircraft), for passengers to call and send emails and text messages, from their own mobile phones, during flights.
OnAir (a joint venture between Airbus and Sita), in cooperation with Tenzing, and Inmarsat are providing the technological and communications support, which involves a pico cell and a cable antena located in the aircraft and call routing via satelite.
CEPT and OnAir have been working together to harmonise national regulations for this service, so that approval is granted by the NRA of the State where the aircraft is registered and recognised by the other regulatory authorities [Decision on the harmonised use of airborne GSM systems in the frequency bands 1710-1785 and 1805-18880 MHz]. OnAir also wants NRA to exempt the service from spectrum licensing, on the grounds that it would not interfere with ground mobile networks.
In the first half of the test period, passengers will be able to use e-mail and text messaging services or sending emails. In the second half, they can use, additionally, voice services. Upon completion of the trial, and taking into consideration customer satisfaction (it is worthwhile mentioning that in a recent Barclaycard Business survey, six out of ten businessman did not want such a service to be introduced) the French company will decide whether to extend this service to the entire fleet.
Other airliners, are reported to follow suit, such as Ryanair (at the end of this year), TAP Air Portugal and Emirates and, according to the latest edition of Airline IT Trends survey, around half of the airlines plan to offer in-flight mobile phone connectivity and internet access by the end of next year.
