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Originally Posted by toddos
What does it matter if they're inside a Faraday cage? Also, airplanes are definitely not Faraday cages, or you'd not be able to use your cell phone in the plane prior to takeoff or after landing.
Also, you need to understand how wifi works. Devices generally don't send out signals unless there's a wifi access point they can connect to. If there's no access point (no in-flight wifi), the devices are passive in terms of radio emissions (they'll still chew up battery looking for wifi signals if you don't put them in airplane mode, of course). Access points with SSID enabled are constantly broadcasting, but as the article said that's only an issue if the access points are misconfigured. One would expect that would not be the case, but if it is there's nothing a passenger can do about it.
When in-flight wifi is turned on and devices are accessing it, the radio emissions don't stack. That is, two devices communicating with an access point do not generate twice as powerful radio emissions as one device communicating with an access point. The problem here apparently has to do with the strength of the signals, not the number of individual signals.
You have to read more of the article than just the headline. In this case, the only known issue with wireless communications interfering with aircraft systems is out of the hands of passengers. While it's theoretically possible that a passenger could bring on a rogue device that intentionally mimics a misconfigured inflight wifi system, or a rogue passenger somehow successfully hacks into the inflight wifi and configures it to cause problems, that's highly unlikely. You can't do this on accident, and any passenger who would do this on purpose isn't going to pay attention to the "please turn off all electronics" requests.
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How much testing have you done with 300 wifi devices on an airplane?
And a number of wifi devices do broadcast or act at access points. Just sit in the terminal and search for wifi points and see what you find. And Blue Tooth.
The point is, there is no way to test ALL the various combinations of devices, including cell phones and similar (CDMA, 3 bands of GSM, Edge, 3G and 4G) to make sure there are no problems.
A few are surely safe, but NO one knows if more can be a problem. And do you want to be on the airplane, in flight, that is the test case?