[jhynesrockmtn]

Back in the mid 90's when I was working at what was then McCaw Cellular, AT&T bought us. We had a subsidiary that was one of 3 licensees of air to ground phone service. This was a cell based technology specific to commercial and private aircraft. The "cells" were shared by all 3 and engineered to work at altitude. The whole model was conceived when mobile phone rates were upwards of $1 per minute and roaming charges were much higher. The pricing on the plane was like $4.95 per minute. The whole business model was a big failure. I took over the CFO role after AT&T realized what they had bought and how much money was being sucked down the drain. I was asked to evaluate the model and give them feedback. By this time cell rates had dropped and the service wasn't used much. Folks could wait the avg. of a couple of hours to make calls. The other feedback was the privacy issues. I advised them to sell if they could which did happen before the whole thing cratered and all 3 shut the service down. Given that many aircraft now have wifi available and apps and phones can access this for voice calls it is coming. I always take noise cancelling headphones on planes.