EU Allows Smartphones During Flights (brusselstimes.com) 68
Within the European Union, airlines will be able to install the latest 5G technology on their aircraft, allowing passengers to use their smartphones and other connected devices just as they do on the ground. From a report: The European Commission has adapted the legislation on mobile communications to the most modern standards. As a result, 5G coverage can also be made available on aircraft. "The sky is no longer the limit when it comes to high-speed, high-capacity connections," said EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton. "5G will enable innovative services for people and growth opportunities for European companies." The 5G coverage will be made possible by installing a so-called "pico-cell" in the aircraft.
satellite network may not that bandwith to max ou (Score:2)
satellite network may not that bandwidth to max out 5G
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Did you brain run out of bandwidth too?
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You think 5G is like the movie Speed? If you use under a certain threshold of bandwidth the plane will explode?
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Pop quiz hot shot There's a bomb on a plane. Once the plane goes 500 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 500, it blows up what do you do? what do you do?
Keep rewinding the movie to the beginning?
Might suck if you are on the ground (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Might suck if you are on the ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Your phone should always choose home network over roaming, not the closest one.
If needed, you can turn off roaming.
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Your phone should always choose home network over roaming, not the closest one. If needed, you can turn off roaming.
When you are in the air it is always going to be roaming though.
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When you are in the air it is always going to be roaming though.
please read the post i replied to. Its not very clear, but he was talking about while the plane is still on the ground.
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Re: Might suck if you are on the ground (Score:1)
Then good thing roaming charges are on their way out of the EU.
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Re: Might suck if you are on the ground (Score:2)
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There's no home network to choose. There are several technical limitations that prevent mobile services from operating in the sky.
1. Let's ignore signal strength from within the aircraft.
2. The subscriber terminal will while travelling over a city see hundreds of very low power cells to choose from and will not make any sane connection choices.
3. The movement over cells will lead to rapid changes in registered cell, the subscriber will spend more time registering than actually sending or receiving meaningfu
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garbz, Read the subject line. We are talking about when on the tarmac.
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5G in the US interferes with flight operations, so I doubt it will be active when airborne.
FTFY
When you are on the ground, parked at the gate or taxiing, 5G works just fine thank you...and without messing up the radar altimeter since gravity is in control at that point.
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Going to be some outcry? (Score:3)
I have to wonder if the people that go wild about 5G antennas will go into an uproar over having a 5G antenna on the same plane they are flying in...
However, does those people even fly anyway? So maybe not an issue. :-)
On a more practical note I wonder if this will end up being more or less reliable than plane WiFi, in terms of actual signal strength between you and the plane internet hub.
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People are stupid. They are against 5G and vaccines but perfectly fine with Elon Musk's neuralink which plants a large chip directly in the brain.
*Note: I am a fan of neuralink, but not anti-5G or an anti-vaxxer.
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People are stupid. They are against things I don't like but perfectly fine with things other people shouldn't like.
*Note: I am a fan of things people shouldn't like, but not against things I don't like.
/u/backslashdot, you can cut and paste this into every thread now. You don't even need to read the summary or be relevant as this will work for all situations.
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They are against 5G and vaccines but perfectly fine with Elon Musk's neuralink which plants a large chip directly in the brain.
Their entire premise is flawed, but that seems perfectly consistent to me. It's much easier to avoid having an elective procedure to have a chip implanted in your brain than to avoid 5G signals, and nobody has argued for mandatory Neuralink (yet).
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You think the people who are against 5G and vaccines are the same people who are in favour of Elon Musk torturing primates?
I really doubt if that's the case or even that the anti-5G/anti-vaxxers like the idea of a direct neural interface even if done properly.
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If they understood science, they would know that pilots are careful not to fly close to the edge of the earth.
Idiots.
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Who is listening? (Score:3)
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On a more practical note I wonder if this will end up being more or less reliable than plain WiFi, in terms of actual signal strength between you and the plane internet hub.
WiFi 5G is more of a protocol specification built on top of the 4G technology. It offers more efficient data transfer using the same frequencies that 4G uses. If the plane has a 5G configured pico-cell, 4G phones will still connect just without the higher efficiency protocol.
The part of 5G that everyone panics about is the higher frequencies that are available in addition to the older 4G frequencies. The frequency range for newly opened C-Band frequencies (3.7–3.98 GHz) are near the frequencies use
Re: Going to be some outcry? (Score:2)
Seriously, I hope this isn't a 5G 'tower' some nut is going to try to burn.
(Waiting for the story of a passenger flaking out and having to be restrained to his seat with zip ties as the jet gets a fighter escort to the nearest airport for this very reason)
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I have to wonder if the people that go wild about 5G antennas will go into an uproar over having a 5G antenna on the same plane they are flying in...
You seem to think just because in a world of 8 billion people there are a handful of morons, that in a plane of 300 people there are a handful of morons too. Don't do that. Despite what you read about on whatever it is that fills your head, the world is not full of such people, and the odds of you coming in contact with any are close to zero.
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Only in your 12-year-old mind. /s
Re: EU Allows Smartphones During Flights (Score:1)
I'm more worried about a unhinged nut doing something that will take down a jet as he is trying to 'save' people from the "evil" 5G hotspot.
As if flying in a plane isn't enough of an unexpected trip to the zoo as it is.
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Re: EU Allows Smartphones During Flights (Score:2)
I'll just leave this here
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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That's a lot of words for "the US dropped the ball on 5G and is dropping it again with 6G".
"I didn't want to kill him officer, (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine your already hellish commuter flight plus 150 salespeople making calls from wheels-up to final descent.
Priorities (Score:3)
Be sure you stock the plane with emergency straitjackets and muzzles before installing the 5G hotspot. You'll need them.
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Imagine your already hellish commuter flight plus 150 salespeople making calls from wheels-up to final descent.
Why would I imagine this completely unrealistic scenario? You can make calls on planes now. Heck in the 90s many flights offered you a phone right in your seat. And even if people don't want to roam, currently when you hit the ground the plane is not full of people making calls either.
Why do you manufacture artificial hatred for other people in your mind?
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Admittedly it is two years since I last flew on a plane, but I've never been on one in which the use of mobile phones not in flight mode was allowed. I have been on planes that had phones but the charges were so extortionate that nobody used them.
I have, on the other hand, been on trains where nearby passengers insisted on using their phones constantly and seen a couple of cases that almost came to violence. It would be worse on a plane because you are all that much closer together and the ambient noise is
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Eh, just grab it, open a window and toss it...
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But he just wouldn't get off of his fucking phone."
Imagine your already hellish commuter flight plus 150 salespeople making calls from wheels-up to final descent.
Salespeople don't travel much any more.
I'm more worried about the vapid conversations of the average person.
I'm by no means a technophobe, but I enjoy the disconnected time of a flight. In fact I enjoy flying in general... It's other passengers I can't stand.
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Imagine your already hellish commuter flight plus 150 salespeople making calls from wheels-up to final descent.
I would gladly trade 150 sales people talking on their phone against the one infant next row that cries non-stop from take-off to landing. Which is a scenario I have experienced more than once, while I am still at zero experiences of too many normal conversations becoming an annoyance.
What a lame cliché! (Score:1)
Imagine your already hellish commuter flight plus 150 salespeople making calls from wheels-up to final descent.
I would gladly trade 150 sales people talking on their phone against the one infant next row that cries non-stop from take-off to landing.
At one point, you were that infant, so please fuck off. You sound like an incel. No one WANTS to travel with an infant, but they may have to.
Many of us move away from our home town to pursue better opportunities and want our kids to meet their grandparents and extended family. It's as shitty for the parent as it is for you and if you were charming enough to persuade a woman to reproduce with you, you'd have more sympathy for that family.
Once you have kids, your kids will do things that are annoying
Pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Pricing (Score:3)
You know they will. Imagine all of the bullshit fees they will tack onto this one!
5G available during the flight... (Score:3)
... but at what price? How much will the airline charge for this feature? Will it require their own "free" app? How much tracking will they do? How much ads will be added to each and every web pages we visit? How much data will be able to use? How much of that data will be eaten by the ads? ...
I'm glad 5G will be allowed, but I'm sure it will be unusable, like all the other connectivity already available on planes today.
Re: 5G available during the flight... (Score:1)
If they charge too much, refer them to the Commission for illegal roaming charges. If ads are a problem, good thing you use an ad blocker. And of course bandwidth will be limited, you can't have it unlimited.
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I would love to agree with you but satellite communications are not part of the EU regulation, the Commission knows about it and their best advice is "deactivate roaming on your device or activate flight mode while on board" https://europa.eu/youreurope/c... [europa.eu] .
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I doubt 5G would be just "roaming" thing. Knowing airlines, they will ask to agree to some things before 5G can be used at all (including how much they will charge you) and to provide a credit card number. I don't see how this can be illegal as long as they are upfront enough and the user can make an "informed decision".
Ad-blocker are not magic solutions. They are easy enough to circumvent (VPN, make the ads look like it comes from the main website, bogus certificate to see/modify HTTPS, ...). They could al
Looking forward... (Score:1)
Sitting next to someone on the phone for a couple of hours without the possibility to get away.
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You can only hear one side of the conversation. For some reason, that seems to make it worse, at least for me.
Phone People. (Score:2, Insightful)
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You don't need to have a phone to be annoying. A guy on the train yesterday talked continuously to his unfortunate companion for a solid hour at twice the necessary volume. When he got up to leave, I really had to restrain myself from saying "Excuse me, but do you *ever* shut the fuck up?". I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been interesting but it was so mind-numbingly tedious that even if I tried to pay attention I couldn't remember the previous sentence.
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Not all phone people are created equal, nor all car people. For every guy with a mall crawler or stanced rice there's a guy with a built not bought yoder or hardcore street racer. I used to have clear cases on my flip phones and shit but I never sold kidneys for 'em
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Honestly, from the outside, it is fucking pathetic.
What's pathetic? That people entertain themselves in ways different to you? What do you do on a plane? Pick your nose? Read a book? That sounds like killing trees, fucking pathetic.
Oh no. (Score:2)
Now I'll be forced to listen to a businessman argue with a colleague about a late order somewhere all the way across the country. Airplanes have been one of the rare places where we are protected from this sort of intrusion on our privacy, but I guess that is ending now.
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