this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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146
You Don’t Need to Use Airplane Mode on Airplanes (gizmodo.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Last time I flew, there was no signal at all while flying.

There's a number of factors that lead to that.

  • The cell base station antennas have a relatively narrow vertical beamwidth and are typically aimed a few degrees below horizontal. (Aircraft tend not to operate at that altitude)

  • usable range of each cell base stations is typically <50 km.

  • Cell base stations are optimized for communicating with mobiles moving less than 90km/h.

Given all that, if you happen to get a signal, you'll be handing off between towers far too fast and too frequently for the network to reliably deal with.