Cell phones aloft: Courtesy or chatter?

As is the case with many really bad ideas, there is a certain aura of inevitability to the prospect that airplane passengers will soon be able to yak on their cell phones, driving everybody within hearing distance crazy.
On the other hand, evidence is mounting that a significant number of travelers do not want to be trapped on an airliner in the proximity of one of those cell phone brayers. Now the nation's biggest cell phone data and network company, Cingular Wireless, has chimed in to say, essentially, hang on a second.
On June 8, Cingular--a joint venture of SBC Communications and BellSouth--sent a letter to Marion C. Blakey, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, that raised a red flag about the prospect of cell phone blabbing on airplanes. "We believe there is a time and a place for wireless phone conversations, and seldom does that include the confines of an airplane flight," wrote Paul R. Roth, Cingular's executive vice president for external affairs.
I thought that was a pretty interesting corporate stance. It sounded to me analogous to Campbell Soup's announcing that there were certain places you should not be eating soup.
"We think that if the ban were to be lifted, and that's a big if, we would urge consumers not to talk when they're in flight, even if they have the opportunity to," said Mark Siegel, a Cingular spokesman.
He added: "It really is an issue to us of--dare I say it?--basic courtesy. We think there's a place to use cell phones and to talk on them, and there are places not to. For example, a theater, a crowded restaurant or, God forbid, a house of worship. One of the other places where you shouldn't be talking on a wireless phone, we think, is in an airliner up at 35,000 feet where you have 150, 250 people who are captive in a closed space."
Federal regulatory authorities have recently been sending signals that they are studying relaxing bans on in-flight use of wireless air-to-ground communications devices, perhaps before the end of 2006. Studies are under way into the potential for air-to-ground wireless transmissions to interfere with land-based wireless networks or with onboard navigational equipment.
Cingular and other wireless communications providers have a commercial interest in these matters, of course. For one thing, they are attuned to a growing backlash against cell phone louts. For another, they are offering a growing array of new services and devices for the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative segment of their business: data and text communications.
Onboard an airplane, "there are other ways to stay in touch that respect the space and comfort and well-being of others in an airplane, if this ban were lifted," Siegel said. "That would be using text messaging, or sending and receiving e-mail." of 50,000 worldwide cell phone users
A recent online survey by IDC, a market research company, found a surprisingly small number of users--11 percent--in favor of allowing passengers to use cell phones on airplanes for voice calls. A big majority--82 percent--said that "voice calls would bother them," the report said. On the other hand, there was strong support--64 percent--for allowing the use of cell phones and other wireless devices for text and data-messaging, the study said.

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I've been around the block a couple of times. My bet is that while in-flight text-messaging will prosper, we're eventually going to have to put up with some half-wit bellowing into a cell phone in the next seat on a five-hour flight to the West Coast. It's got that aura of inevitability, as I said.
Airlines are aware of the potential social problems--and not unaware of the potential new revenue sources in-flight cell phone use might bring.
I had lunch the other day with Richard Branson, the chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways. Always an innovator with the uses of airline cabin space, he suggested that perhaps entire sections could be segregated for cell phone talkers, much as airplanes used to have smoking and nonsmoking sections. "It might be like the cell phone-free cars we have on trains," Sir Richard said.
That's one possibility. Another comes from a reader, Emily D. Greenberg of New York, who wrote with a suggestion that evoked an already proven, if today barely recalled, remedy:
"Regarding the impending use of cell phones on planes, I have an idea which may help curb the expected cabin rage: Install one or two small lavatory-like rooms, fitted with a stool and writing shelf and wired with whatever is needed for the cell phone connection. That would be the only place on the plane where cell phones would work, and would-be users would stand on line to await their turn. Do the words telephone booth come to mind?"