SUBSCRIBERS to the Cytamobile network will be able from Monday to use their phones during flights on certain airlines – but so far not including Cyprus Airways – following an agreement with OnAir, one of the two providers of in-flight mobile telephony services.
OnAir is currently providing services for Ryanair, bmi (formerly British Midland), Egyptair, Royal Jordanian, Qatar Airways and Hong Kong Airlines. British Airways is also an OnAir customer, but only for its new twice-daily business flights from London City Airport to JFK in New York.
Ryanair introduced in-flight telephony service on 20 of its Dublin-based aircraft in February, at the same time announcing plans to roll the service out to its fleet of over 170 aircraft over the following 18 months.
Cytamobile is also in negotiations with AeroMobile, the other provider of in-flight telephony services, which currently provides services for Emirates.
Subscribers to the MTN network have been able to use their mobile phones on four international airlines since June last year, and the company expects to gradually add more airlines to their coverage.
Although today there are only limited opportunities to use a mobile phone legally on commercial airlines, the European Commission (EC) last year paved the way for wider use by laying down rules to harmonise the technical and licensing requirements for the use of mobile phones on aircraft across all 27 member states.
The EC rules will ensure that passengers’ phones will be linked to an onboard cellular network connected to the ground via satellite – in effect, the plane will become a base station for mobile telephony.
The onboard system will at the same time prevent phones from connecting directly to mobile networks on the ground below, thus ensuring that transmission powers are kept low enough for mobile phones to be used without affecting the safety of aircraft equipment or the normal operation of mobile networks on the ground.
On a practical level, this means that each aircraft needs to be kitted out with transmitters, so the start-up cost of such a service is one factor.
Cyprus Airways press spokesman Kyriacos Kyriacou also said that the advantages and disadvantages of the relatively-new technology still needs to be assessed, but “at the point when the technology has been rolled out sufficiently widely, we will take a serious look at it.”
Another – the human factor – is more problematic. Kyriacou said that “there is caution in the industry over allowing onboard mobile calls, as each airline would have to bring in rules to prevent passengers from talking non-stop during the whole flight.”
This problem is unlikely to occur at this early stage in the service’s development, as the cost of using it is still painfully high. When Cytamobile subscribers link up with the in-flight service, they will receive a text message from CYTA warning them that using the service is expensive and reminding them that the call will be charged per minute rather than per second.
The current rates are as follows: outgoing calls to any destination (including Cyprus) cost €2.07 plus VAT per minute or part-minute; incoming calls will cost €2.98 plus VAT per minute or part-minute; and text messages will cost €0.575 each.
The EC has regulated EU-wide roaming rates for ground-based mobile services, but will only look at in-flight services in the future.
