How would in-flight calling actually work?

Making phone calls from 35,000 feet in the air has been a hot-button topic of late. But there is still the question of how all of this will work and, perhaps more importantly, how much it will cost for you to place a call. The answers aren’t exactly as cut-and-dried as you might think.

The Federal Communications Commission is only concerned with whether or not it should approve one specific technology required to place calls from a plane using your mobile phone. This technology has been used by international airlines for years and consists of installing a small cell tower on the plane itself (commonly called a "picocell") that transmits calls from the air to the ground. Use of picocells in airplanes has been banned in the US, but other countries have not had a problem with allowing them. A picocell system would likely require customers to pay roaming fees for each minute that they are talking on the phone, much like how international roaming is charged today. Virgin Atlantic’s AeroMobile service is only available to customers of British carriers O2 and Vodafone and costs £1 per minute for calls and 20 pence for text messages, for example (it’s also limited to six users at a time).

[Dec 26]