Windows Phone Thoughts: WiFi Way Up High?

My very most favourite (not) online news source, The Register, has an interesting article about a potential use of WiFi and PDAs in the wild blue yonder. Supposedly, Britannia Airlines will soon be issuing Cassiopeia PDAs to its cabin crews and eventually wirelessly linking them to each other and to an in-flight duty-free shop. You'll need to read the entire article to see all of the possible ways the devices might be used; more importantly, though, it reintroduces the discussion of whether wireless devices are really as much a danger to airline flight controls as we've been led to believe.

While you're at it, be sure to read the related editorial entitled Time To Challenge Airline Paranoia On Wireless. I know next to nothing about how radio waves do or do not interfere with each other or the inner workings of an airliner's navigation system. I do know, though, that whenever I fly I see a LOT of people breaking the "10,000 foot rule" and in all my travels I do not recall ever being in a single airline disaster.

I propose an experiment to settle the matter once and for all. I say we load up an airliner with a bunch of our favourite "test monkeys," like Washington DC bureaucrats, tax collectors, country western singers and proctologists. Then, we give them each a collection of mobile phones, notebook PCs and wireless PDAs, turn all the devices on and set the plane on a transatlantic flight.

Sure, if wireless interference really IS a problem, the losses would be significant. But isn't it worth the cost of a few PDAs to find out?