Coming soon: phones on a plane

Good news for the chatty among us and bad news for the easily-annoyed: the BBC is reporting that mobile calls on airlines could be a reality in Europe by as early as next year. The proposed plan would involve a picocell GSM base-station on the plane that would relay calls via satellite to a switching unit on the ground. Of course, the proposed service would probably cost a bit more than a standard call but that's probably of little concern if you need to blab loudly about your love life at 35,000 feet. The European Aviation Safety Agency and the U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) are still working to figure out the logistics but if these systems do end up sneaking on to European planes next year, it probably won't be long until we see similar functionality here in the States. Would phones on planes be a welcome addition or a public scourge? Let us know in the comments.

For more on the plan:
- see this BBC article