[LakeLoon]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

A recent article on the use of cell phones (and similar wireless devices) was on topic. When cruising at 38,000 ft., you are in 'sight' of perhaps hundreds of cell phone towers. When those devices attempt to pick one, they pick all. The bandwidth load is tremendous trying to deal with such chaos. It's not all about RF within the aircraft itself.

Actually, I am fully in support of maintaining the ban on cell phone conversations throughout the flight! The technical case may or may not be compelling, but for me it's all about the impact on other passengers. Modern air travel is unpleasant enough; the thought of being trapped in a tiny seat next to someone yakking away on their cell phone on a long flight makes me cringe . . .

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

I wrote this: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=188 on page 13 of this very discussion, followed by this: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...290#post887290

It's not exactly what you ask, but could give you a start

Thanks for that; they are helpful posts. I did read the entire thread (and lots of supplemental material from elsewhere) before posting. As I think you recognize, my point was that listing possible risks only gets you so far. At a certain point, you want to "quantify" the risks, i.e., assign some numbers to them, or at least ranges/orders of magnitude. When you're considering taking a medication and one of the possible side effects is "death," I assume you are interested in how frequently the medication causes death! My frustration with the FAA is they seem unwilling to bring the discussion into the realm of numbers.

On the topic of using wifi in-flight, it is definitely here in the US; I've flown on planes offering the service. One such service is Gogo. Their site claims the service is installed on 1028 aircraft so far.