One year after the European Commission put in place common rules for safe use of mobile phones on aircrafts and for simple and non-bureaucratic authorisations of this essentially cross border service, 27 European aircraft have been equipped to allow the secure use of standard GSM handsets onboard aircraft while flying in European airspace. The number of aircrafts enabled for in-flight use of mobile phones is expected to double by the end of the year.

In April 2008, the Commission introduced rules to harmonise conditions for mobile phone services on aircraft across the EU. One year later, these enabling rules have allowed two providers of mobile communications services on-board airplanes (MCA), OnAir (Geneva) and AeroMobile (London) to start business in Europe. They associate themselves with airlines interested in making such services available to their passengers.

Presently, three European airlines – Ryanair (Ireland), TAP (Portugal) and BMI (United Kingdom) – are building up the service in their fleets: 27 aircraft have already been equipped and the number of MCA-enabled aircraft is expected to double by end of this year. This constitutes a promising start, while technical trials are taking place in other airlines.

Meanwhile, the airlines are fine-tuning the conditions under which passengers can use their phone on-board aircraft to ensure wider consumer acceptance of the new service, and are analysing the service take-up on those aircraft that are already equipped. Current indications are that the price of on-board phone services so far start from approx. €1.60 per minute for a voice call and approx. €0.43 for a text message, depending on the terrestrial mobile service provider whose subscription the passenger is using.

The Commission took regulatory action in 2008 to allow for the safe and EU-wide operation of mobile communications on-board aircraft, and create the conditions for businesses to offer these services on flights that often cross several borders. This required three steps:

• To ensure that the use of equipment on board – including the passengers' handsets – does not cause interference with the aircraft's equipment and systems.
• To ensure that mobile equipment does not interfere with terrestrial mobile communications networks but connects exclusively to the on-board base station linked to the ground via satellite.
• To offer common rules and standards so that on-board base stations are authorised to operate as a plane flies over different EU Member States.

A model for other continents

The European approach has served as a model for use in other regions. Several airlines outside Europe (including Qantas, Emirates, Malaysian Airlines, Royal Jordanian, Wataniya, Virgin Australia) have been testing the service or are offering it, with some 40 aircraft already equipped. Other airlines have announced similar intentions. The prevalence worldwide of the GSM standard (currently used by almost 3 billion people) makes the business model attractive, as passengers can use their normal mobile phone.

Airline Roaming

The 'airline roaming', or mobile calls and text messages on-board aircraft is treated as international roaming similar to terrestrial roaming services. The first examples show that the tariffs are significantly lower than the in-flight fixed telephone services via satellite links offered in the past. The in-flight mobile communications fall outside the scope of the Commission's regulatory actions targeted to reduce international roaming tariffs for voice and data, as they are considered an innovative service on an emerging market. The cost of mobile communications on-board aircraft is therefore fixed by the service provider. The European Commission is, however, closely monitoring the levels and transparency of prices charged to consumers.