this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Absolutely still turn it on though, or your phone will be pushing it's power to the max screaming for cell towers the whole flight.
But sure if you want to pop it on when you get close to landing, you can usually get a signal that low.
Not if there is a picocell on board - that's one of the major points of the article, including the EU mandating their installing on flights in Europe to enable people to connect.
However I agree with the airlines that lobbied in the US against this. It's going to be a source of air rage - people crammed in a small space do not want to listen to other people yapping loudly on cell phones or video calls. It's simpler to just ban it outright. Although I am sure the airlines also don't want to have to pay for data connections and their air staff be responsible for dealing with irate customers when the connection is out.
But airlines have already started monetising things by making WiFi available on board flights for a fee - that is already opening the door to calls. I suspect we'll end up with it as standard and a fight against exorbitant charges for connecting imposed by airlines.
You'll have 4G and possibly 5G throughout the whole flight inside Norway. It's not uncommon to see people browsing Netflix on their flight.
Interesting, I've never gotten any signal after the first 15 minutes or so inside the US.
Does the US have decent coverage? Over 85% of the land area in Norway is covered, 99,9% if we go by where people live, so you'll have coverage even deep into fjords or mountains up here.
There are huge swaths of the US not covered. You could be driving between two cities less than an hour apart and hit dead zones.
Canada is no better. Shit my work is on the opposite side of the hill as our radio town and get fuck all for cell signal and the tower is less than 1km from me
//Should add that the mayor of our town made it impossible to rent out space on the water tower (which is at the peak of said hill) because after 2001 our town could be a target for terrorism.... I'm 200km from Toronto and 45 km away from a major military air base
That's wild. You got to be in a very remote place for that to ever happen here. Granted, there is a fair bit of competition between the three main telecom companies, and data coverage has been one of the biggest topics between them for over a decade.
the size difference helps in Norways favor too I imagine (and probably shape too!)
It's certainly smaller than any American state, but for our population it's fairly big. The topology of the country also isn't very friendly to cell signals. 90+% of the country is mountainous/fjords. It's why coverage has been a big selling point, a bunch of people live on some random mountain side in the middle of nowhere.
From what I've heard, there isn't much competition in the US though, so I guess that plays a part. We got three companies independently building out their own network across the whole country.
Do you mean Norwegian?
The country, not the company. I don't think Norwegian got 4G cell towers strapped to their airplanes
So you get cell reception if you fly over Norway‽ That sounds unlikely to be true. Maybe it can happen occasionally like anywhere in the world but I highly doubt it happens often.
A private 5G network on a plane seems more likely but wifi is obviously more reasonable (Which I think all Norwegian planes have by default)
You'll be lucky if they have seats.