Qantas Gets Go Ahead For Cell Phone Trial

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 18 April 2007

Page 1 of 2 Australian Airline, Qantas has the go ahead from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to run an evaluation of GSM mobile phones and GPRS devices on a commercial aircraft. The communications regulator has only given the thumbs up to a single aircraft for up to a year long trial, but the Qantas pilot will be one of the first implementations of this kind of service in the world. "The granting of permissions for the evaluation service is the culmination of many months of work aimed at facilitating an industry need," said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman. To clear the way for the evaluation, ACMA has granted various approvals and exemptions including a carrier licence and a scientific assigned apparatus licence for a network control unit, and two Nominated Carrier Declarations. The move is in stark contrast to the United States where the Federal Communications Commission recently ruled that it would not permit the use of mobile phones in-flight after spending the last three years considering lifting the current ban. The FCC decided it was not entirely sure that in-flight calls would not confuse terrestrial base stations and besides, people making calls mid-flight might annoy other travellers. The Australian evaluation will see the Qantas passenger jet fitted with a network control unit (NCU) that blocks access to terrestrially-based radio communications in the frequency bands 870 - 960 MHz or 825 - 845 MHz (the 900MHz band). The system consists of pico-cells on-board the plane which are linked via satellite to a ground GSM/GPRS switching system. << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>