Flighty Fone Calls From Aerophone

Aerophone Ltd. has developed a communication system that’s now ready for series production, a system that enables mobile telephone calls to be made from aircraft, totally independent of GSM/CDMA ground stations. According to the CEO of Aerophone, Henry Shabat, the system supports all wavebands and requires neither the prior written registration of the passengers, nor a particular billing system. The call costs of US$.160 (1 euro) per minute are invoiced via the user’s normal phone bill. The development has been made possible, on one hand, by the installation of so-called picocells (miniature GSM stations) in the aircraft and, on the other hand, by servers and transceivers for linking to telecommunication satellites and receiving stations for the Ku-band. “The picocells in the immediate vicinity of the passengers automatically reduce the energy output of the logged-in mobile telephones to a minimum,” explains Shabat, thereby referring to the latest studies which show that the electromagnetic radiation of mobile telephones below that of the threshold value realized with Aerophone has no negative effects on the aircraft electronic systems.

In small aircraft, the mobile telephone calls from the aircraft are transferred to the satellite system. They can relay up to 24 calls simultaneously to terrestrial telephone networks via several receiving stations and gateways. In larger aircraft, an additional transceiver for the Ku-band (10.7 to 17.8 GHz) is installed. This allows as many as 96 calls simultaneously. As the bandwidth for the connections is limited, Shabat says that presently only telephone calls and communication via short messages are viable. As opposed to in-flight telephone systems previously presented, installation and operation of the Aerophone systems is free of charge for the airlines. “In this way we want to achieve the greatest possible acceptance of our system,” explains Shabat. “Thus, there will soon be no more airlines where you can’t use your mobile telephone during the flight.” Shabat, who was one of the developers of modern mobile telephony, hopes to recoup the development costs by sharing in the turnover of the telephone companies. “That means we have placed the entrepreneurial risk entirely on our side,” explains the expert. “We’re just totally and completely sure of our product.”—Tel Aviv, Israel