PM at 32000 feet?!?!?!

[neo911]

Was returning to Toronto from Amsterdam. The plane was somewhere near Toronto (between Montreal and Toronto) at 32000 ft.

Since the plane was about to land in some time I switched on my phone and was just fiddling around. While switching it on forgot to put it in the airplane mode (my bad!)

Suddenly I got voice mail alerts and could see PM network with 1 signal bar!!! It was for a brief time period, maybe 4-5 seconds.

But is that even possible? I don't think any cellphone reception is available at such altitude. Some airlines offer inflight cellphone access but that's limited to carriers like T-mobile and on U.S. flights.

My airline did not even have wifi services on board.

Any clue how did this happen?

[Watoko]

At first I thought this thread was meant for us to provide a high level overview (ie. at 30,000 ft) of Public Mobile.

Intersting observation @neo911!

[paulie]

Seems PM goes "above" and "beyond" in this particular case. 🙂

[ben10nnery]

As long as you have a somewhat line of sight with a tower or repeater you could technically get a signal.

I remember one summer where I worked in the absolute middle of nowhere with no coverage at all at a drilling camp. Around once a week we would get into one of the helicopters we had on site and the pilot flew about three miles south and up maybe ten times the treeline height and voila, one bar of service! Closest tower was at least 100 miles away. We would check our messages that way.

[neo911]

@sheytooncould be the only logical explanation. But its kinda freaky to see your cellphone receive signals so high up.

Well another reason people should shift to PM. get cellphone access at 32000 ft. ;o)

[sheytoon]

Wow, that is definitely unusual! Generally, cellular antennas are tilted downwards to control coverage and interference.

I wonder if you were receiving a reflected signal by chance.

[neo911]

Wind users lol! I was one earlier so I can very well relate to it.

But I did get voicemail alerts. So the reception was definitely there otherwise would not have got that

[neo911]

No i did not attempt a call. Anyway the reception came for just couple of seconds.

[paulie]

It's LTE, Level To Everywhere ! 🙂

[Samianauman]

Lol true

[will13am]

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@kav2001c wrote:

@neo911 just because it shows reception does not mean you actually have reception (ask Wind users lol)

Wind's problem is congestion.  Reception does not equate to the service actually working, it just means the phone is connected to the network. 

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[kav2001c]

@neo911 just because it shows reception does not mean you actually have reception (ask Wind users lol)

[Samianauman]

If that happen then it's pretty amazing signals at 32000 ft above did you try to make a call

[will13am]

I noticed the same effect also a couple of weeks ago.  I don't think I was 32000 feet in the air though, but the altitude was quite high though.  The signal actually disappeared upon further descent and then it came back again. 

[SD08]

I think this is a question for our resident cellular network expert, @sheytoon.