Why you can't get cell service on the tarmac | Hacker News Reader

Why you can't get cell service on the tarmac

thepointsguy.com

26 pointstptacek44 comments

I'm ruining a good article, but I'll summarize: you can't build good coverage in an airport with cell towers because of height restrictions, so airports augment their coverage with indoor repeaters; once you get on the plane, you're out of range of the indoor repeater network.

And you are inside a metal tube that does a good job of shielding I suspect, at least if you are not close to a window.

Any they don't turn in WiFi until they're in the sky because they don't want people on their devices (and I'm sure there are technical reasons as well).

I've been on a few Delta flights that had working wifi from gate to gate.

Every southwest flight I’ve been on has wifi from gate to gate, but may not have internet access until airborn.

Commercial Airlines use either Air To Ground (ATG), satellite, or both to deliver internet. When the plane is on the ground it can't see the ATG towers. So 10,000ft is both a regulatory and a technical limitation for ATG.

Thanks, I had to read at least until the 4th paragraph to get any useful information.

Not a problem in my country. Every time I flew internally people were texting and watching youtube all the way to the point where the crew had to tap on their shoulder before take-off to switch to airplane mode or shut them off.

So my guess this has to do with article's author personal experience on his/her country implementation of technology.

Does anything actually happen if nobody switches their phone to airplane mode and kept watching videos on YouTube? I have witnessed some people do the policing on behalf of flight attendees, but I'm never sure enough to say that rule has no scientific basis.

Our phones GSM bands interfere with unsheilded radios. The effect is most prominent when you’re getting a call and you’re close to a hifi system.

Often you can tell that your phone is about to ring before the phone even begins to vibrate or chime.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-speakers-make-noise-when-mobile...

There is a high likelihood that this isn’t a problem now and hasn’t been a problem for some time; but it might be wise to err on the side of caution if you want your pilot not to have to repeat or request repeats of radio information.

And once you’re in the air your phone will frenetically try to connect to a cell tower, absolutely murdering battery life. So you should turn it off after take off anyway just for your own battery sake.

I have two different sets of Logitech speakers that would buzz seconds ahead of me receiving a text message on my 2G phones.

If there was any danger of mobile phones interfering with aircraft systems then they wouldn’t rely on the general public following instructions to make it safe.

This is the logic I've always held - if it's actually dangerous, they wouldn't allow it on board.

It's annoying that they wont tell us the context of why they prefer it, I'm assuming it's due to the interference I've seen in my own life.

However it could just as easily be spectrum oversaturation, so if 10% of passengers disobey there's no issue, but if 100% of passengers disobey then they have to start restricting phones on planes.

Air travel feels draconian enough, I'm willing to just comply, since this compliance benefits my battery-life anyway I'm not going to split hairs. I would like to bring water with me though.

I remember the incoming call interference being being a thing in 2G times (late 90s, early 00s), but I haven't experienced it in a very long time. Do digital protocols cause less interference (possibly due to frequency hopping or just running on different frequencies)?

edit: 2G was also digital.

No. That's just a boogeyman sold by corporations to make you pay for their extra-services.

Otherwise Al-Qaeda would've dropped the entire Western planes by smuggling cell phones in luggage of unsuspecting fliers.

And there is plenty of evidence people forget their phone on by mistake. You draw the conclusions.

This is not an issue I have ever experienced. I can’t get reliable coverage in my office but planes on the ground seem to be fine (mostly Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Des Moines). Maybe it affect some airports more than others.

I concur. I've left my phone on by accident a few times and usually I'm getting alerts right before touch down.

same I have never had an issue

I agree I was confused by this.. I've never had issues with cell signal just before/after landing, and it's always the last/first thing I do while flying to update family...

Perhaps it's only certain service providers, airports, or just airports the author has used and is extrapolating?

The 700-850 MHz band had some good range (miles), so while there might be challenges from being in a metal tube, is be somewhat surprised if there's not a mobile tower nearby.. if not multiple. The usual problem in this setting is overcrowding, so most highly populated public places have overlapping coverage. The author makes it seem like no cell towers would exist within 10 miles of an airport, which would mean nobody near an airport would have good service (including homes, or roadways)

Same. I've flown dozens of times through JFK, EWR, CLT, MIA, PHX, and SFO in the past few years, and I can't recall any trouble at all.

The author has extrapolated their experience in (at most) a handful of airports to the general case.

One of the first projects I was given as a junior engineer was to measure signal strengths of our and competitor mobile networks at the local airport. This was pre September 11, but I was still amazed at the access we got carrying a signal analyser and just flashing our employee badges got us.

For inbound roaming users, absent particular partner network preferences (which were less common back then), the mobile device would select the local network to use based on relative signal strengths when turned on. Capturing those inbound roaming fees was a high priority for the product managers and hence a lot of effort and infrastructure investment went into this.

I've noticed poor mobile reception on the tarmac at both Oakland and San Francisco airports in California. The airports are both have runways that are right on the water, which presumably means they are about as far from mobile towers as one can be at an airport. I'd guess that landlocked airports have better reception.

>Once you’re on a plane, you’re farther away from the DAS systems in the terminal and closer to the larger cell towers that are located on the outer edges of the airport. Add in on board Wi-Fi systems, and your phone can easily get confused as to which antenna its meant to connect through.

Huh? On-board WiFi and mobile network are completely different technologies. They might mean the in-flight GSM they sometimes offer, but that's not on on the ground.

Seems like a filler article to promote their site, not really too much interesting content.

It's late, but perhaps its worth changing this link to point to the original article from the Atlantic?[0]

[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/12/why-c...

> While just about everyone knows to turn their cellphone off or on airplane mode once the plane takes off, there’s no rule against using it while your plane is on the ground.

In my experience it's not uncommon (but also far from universal) to hear some version of "please leave your phones in airplane mode until we have reached the terminal" after landing.

Explaining why I can’t do something I routinely do has got to take the cake. I can usually use the Internet. In fact, that’s when I panic buy Kindle books for the flight.

BOS is unusable on the ground, as an example.

I use an MVNO, and my roaming is frequently international. I don't notice this problem because an MVNO roaming is a recipe for a long, slow APN negotiation war with trombone data effects.

It always causes me some pain to watch others get ping-bombed by texts, until I remember they are probably locals, reattaching to their base carrier.

I am waiting for the last cab in the rank to groan, walk up, and accept the 'no speak the language' passenger who doesn't know how to behave.

Slightly related to a comment in the article about airport interiors being so big: Why is it that almost _all_ airports have those huge ceilings?

Is it just for aesthetics? Personally it feels really uncomfortable and just wasteful. I can't help but think you could make airports a hell of a lot smaller and make it a better experience overall.

An interesting contrast is Narita's low-cost-carrier terminal 3. It has normal ceilings, and the only thing really airport-y about it is that there's a security checkpoint. It's basically a bus terminal, if buses had wings. Plus it has a normal food court (instead of all the overpriced BS you find in other places). An airport for the masses

When I go into an airport terminal with lower ceilings (e.g. parts of Melbourne Airport) I feel _noticeably_ more cramped and claustrophobic. It really does make the experience feel worse for me.

I'm not entirely sure why it makes me feel that way.

Melbourne airport is the one that instantly popped in to my mind as it's the airport I've spent most time in.

And yeah, there are a couple of noticeably lower ceilings in there.

But, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that tests have shown people become much more agitated in crowded places with regular (is it 8' / 2400mm?) ceilings. I can't imagine that scenario would make me feel at ease.

I cannot reconcile the number of Australian frequent flyers who love to talk about how MEL is so much better than SYD with the ceilings of MEL T1.

Yes, yes, I know, it's all about how you don't need to catch a bus to get from T1 to T2... but I'll always dislike MEL T1 more than dealing with SYD.

Building an airport is a huge and costly undertaking — so much so that it represents more than just a building. The airport will be the first thing people see when arriving in a place, and the last thing they see when they leave. It’s a landmark. It tries to reflect the way the city sees itself, and how it wants to portray itself to the rest of the world.

It’s important to build something that gives you an experience. There are very few places left that put effort into architecture to make you feel something, and an airport project is big enough to make it worth it. And there really is a sense of wonder in the act of flying itself.

There are plenty of smaller airports that focus on being functional, and most of them feel like little more than glorified bus stations.

And if nothing else, a nice airport makes people feel good about flying, so they do it more often. It is a business at the end of the day.

You might want to check with your fellow travelers -- the terminals I've spent a lot of time in with low ceilings have all been terrible experiences. Also, no one builds shopping malls with low ceilings. NYC's Penn Station is an excellent example of the worst railway station possible. And so on.

Here are some theories: https://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/2fricv/why_do_airp...

Summary: prevents claustrophobia/overheating, allows high signs to be seen from far away, possibly structurally sounder for a wide room to be higher, aesthetics.

It's not called "the tarmac" by anyone in aviation. Taxiway and ramp?

Maybe it's not intended for people in aviation.

This is a good thing. Nothing more annoying than sitting next to someone yapping on their phone in a plane.

Cell service isn't for yapping anymore, it's for scrolling!

Next "big innovation" must be auto-scrolling - and, we're back at yapping.

Do you feel the same about people speaking a language you don't understand? It has the same problems of being a noise that you can't pay attention to because it doesn't make sense but you can't shut out because it's loud and filled with features.

Conversations, even in a foreign language have a different feeling than monologues with pauses.

Very few people converse in person as loudly as some people converse on the phone. I really don’t care what language people speak to their seat mates in as long as they are not yelling down the aisle.

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