You know that guy that sits next to you on the airplane that still makes cell phone calls even though all the flight attendants told him to stow his belongings?  Yeah, that guy.  Well, if you’re flying on Air France, you can’t be mad at that guy anymore.  Bummer.

That’s right, Air France is going through a trial phase of allowing in-flight cell phone use for sending and receiving short messages or checking their email…in 3 months time, voice calls are going to be lumped into the experiment, assuming of course it doesn’t interfere with the comfort or well-being of other passengers.  Newsflash, it already is.

Actually, I shouldn’t be so harsh, as a member of the mobile generation I can fully appreciate the need to speak to someone when you want, where you want, and no mobile warrior is complete without that capability.  This will help in that regard but the true question remains…at what cost?  According to the article, to avoid navigation/plane operation issues here’s how it goes down:

“A small cellular base station inside the plane routs onboard calls and messages. Messages are sent to a satellite and then to the ground and the phone’s network. The service is supplied by OnAir, a company partially owned by airplane maker Airbus.” 

Groovy, but does that mean I want to hear about your meatloaf, your business deal, your schmoopy woopy or your love bug?  No.  It doesn’t, and No, it won’t.

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As we wait for MoGo’s headset rollout, Sprint rolled out the next generation of cell phone usage in parts of Denver and Indianapolis with little fanfare.

It’s a small cellular base station they’re calling “Sprint Airave” (warning: link launches a talkative video) and it provides service specifically to a customer’s home.

The way it works is fairly simple. The base station is plugged into a broadband Internet connection and works with any Sprint handset. When the subscriber leaves home, a call shifts over to the outside cellular network.

The initial purchase price is US$49.99. So low that many industry analysts postulate that Sprint is subsidizing the expense. The monthly usage rates are similarly priced at $15 for an individual and $30 for a family for unlimited local and nationwide long-distance calls while at home.

The key to the base system is something called a “Femtocell”. The word comes from physics, and means ‘on a small order of size’. The technology has been around a long times to solve the problem of weak cellular signals in homes, which is common in the U.S. but the cost of making them portable was considered prohibitive.

The base stations work not only to extend the functionality of the cell phone the customer already has but also as an alternative to Wi-Fi phones in the home.

Sprint is the first to enter the market with femtocell technology for their domestic customers. The corporation has announced that they will be in wide distribution in 2008.

According to Yahoo!;

“…one  question yet to be answered about femtocells is whether they will interfere with the existing outdoor cellular network. That can only be answered through real-world deployments, analysts say.”

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