The discussion started because of an article on The Register, but also includes avionics and wireless communication.

This is a cut of the discussion:

"1: FCC bans cell phones in flight because the altitude and speed of an airplane would cause the cell phone to be reserving bandwidth on many cells, thus vastly diminishing capacity. Also depending on the anti-fraud measures in place, it may prevent the cell phone companies from charging (depends on how sensitive the sanity checking is). The billing problem could be easily solved, but the capacity problem is inherent to the system.

2: FAA bans cell phones because of the remote *possibility* of frequency leakage off the devices which could interfere with the communications systems of the aircraft. If you have ever seen an electric shaver interfere with your FM radio, you know what I mean. For good reason, the FAA tends to be very paranoid about these things."