Air France In-Flight Cell Phone Calling Tests Begin: Not So Great
The Air France in-flight calling trial is now well underway, and it looks like there are still some kinks left to iron out. The New York Times hitched a ride on a recent flight featuring tests of the system, and found that things weren't quite working up to snuff: Voice quality was said to be like "talking to a small robot," only six passengers could get a signal at a time, BlackBerry email didn't work, and calls placed from the ground to cell phones in the air went straight to voicemail.
That's a pretty long list for a system that's been talked about for a couple years now -- let's hope OnAir manages to clear up some of these glitches before angry passengers revolt over not only having to listen to other people's conversations, but also their screaming over bad connections. [Source: NYTimes]
Filed under: Cell Phones
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ken @ Apr 21st 2008 10:54AM
Considering that cell phones draw signals from land based towers, how can it possibly be that they don't work very well eight miles up in the air whipping past towers at 500 mph?