Worldwide mobile calls from aircraft--for US$1.60 per minute.

The Israeli company Aerophone Ltd has developed a communication system, now ready for series production, with which mobile telephone calls can be made from aircraft--independent of GSM/CDMA ground stations. According to Henry Shabat, CEO of Aerophone, 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$ 1.60 US dollars (about 1 euro) per minute are invoiced via the normal mobile telephone 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 realised 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 thereby 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, which then allows up to 96 calls simultaneously. Since the bandwidth for the connections is limited, Shabat says that presently only telephone calls and communication via short messages are realisable.

CTO Aerophone Ltd