POLICIES :: eCommunications :: On aircraft
Mobile phone calls permitted during flights
Currently, aircraft are one of the few places where mobile phones and other electronic communications cannot function. But this is now changing in Europe as new rules and technical conditions were established in 2008 to allow air passengers to make and receive calls on their mobile phones above the clouds.
Mobile communications on aircraft (MCA) covers the in-flight use of normal mobile phones and other devices to make calls, send and receive messages and use e-mail. Technically the technology is limited at present to the GSM 1800 MHz service, but the term MCA is used as other mobile technologies could be deployed in the future.
As all regular fliers know, mobile phones are usually requested to be turned off when on board an aircraft due to the potential for high-power transmissions from such devices to interfere with the plane’s avionics. However in an aircraft fitted with MCA equipment a controlled communications environment is established in the cabin, which forces all mobile phones to connect to the MCA at low power.
The right kit
MCA equipment consists of a ‘picocell’ – a very small mobile base station – and a network control unit that stops onboard phones connecting with land-based networks that cannot cope with phones moving at high speed. This potential disruption to land-based networks was another reason for the prohibition on mobile phone use in commercial airliners.
The third element of the MCA set-up is a satellite link connecting the aircraft to public phone networks on the ground. This link is already used by the aircraft crew for operational communications.
To ensure minimal risk to terrestrial networks, the use of MCA will be restricted to aircraft cruising at an altitude of 3000 metres or above. This includes the vast majority of flights in Europe.
Commission coordination
Airliners in Europe typically cross several borders during flights so coordination at the European level was crucial to achieve the basis of a truly pan-European MCA service.
The EU initiated a research project called Wireless Cabin to assess the feasibility of MCA between 2000 and 2002. The project successfully demonstrated the technology and showed that interference with on-board and external systems was negligible.
With the technology in place and available for deployment, the Commission has now, following wide-scale consultation, published two measures to ease the bureaucracy involved in launching MCA services for real.
The first is a Commission Recommendation for a harmonised approach to licensing which will promote mutual recognition between national authorisations for mobile communications on board aircraft.
The recommendation will work in parallel with a Commission Decision that sets out the harmonised technical parameters for on-board equipment for in-flight mobile phone use throughout the EU. This will allow Member States to recognise each others’ licences for mobile communications without risk to mobile networks on the ground.
This sets a unified environment for the provision of pan-European MCA services through existing, or new, commercial providers. The actual pricing and availability of MCA services will be determined through normal market forces, as well as the issue of passenger comfort which will have to be addressed by the airlines.
Current situation
In October 2010 - one and a half years after the adoption of the Commission's regulatory measures - a number of European airlines have been piloting the MCA services and some are offering the in-flight connectivity to their passengers. For the moment, over 60 airplanes of European and Middle-East -based airlines have been equipped and the number is expected to increase in the near future.