Oprah uses wireless to make a technically forbidden call

Would you want to hear her talking on the phone on your plane? Credit: adria-richards via Flickr.

Wireless on airplanes is getting its 15 minutes of fame today, when Oprah makes a call on her show to a Virgin America flight attendant who will be on a plane in the air.

There's a catch, though -- and no, it's not that everyone on the flight will get free cars. Oprah is calling the plane using Skype, the voice-over-Internet protocol service that allows you to make calls over a computer. And Aircell, the WiFi provider, doesn't actually allow passengers to use VoIP, including Skype, on any of its flights.

"We made an exception just for Oprah," said Arianne Venuso, an Aircell spokeswoman. Aircell, which is expanding to dozens of American Airlines and Virgin America planes this summer,  works by transmitting a signal from cell towers around the country to small antennas installed on the planes.

Technically, you could make phone calls with the service, and you could easily make VoIP calls over a service such as Skype. But the airlines have all request that VoIP service be blocked, Venuso said.

"The airlines know that their passengers don’t want to hear people talking on the phone," she said.

But what if that person is Oprah?

-- Alana Semuels

Comments

[DrVoIP]

why exception for Oprah?

[Gerry]

Oprah is a influantial person an a good role model for woman strong giving courageous human I would go anyway in Aus to meet her.

[Gerry]

I lv to meet Ophah I watch her show an the people she interviews I am following her on twitter to get some tickets for her show.

[Ron]

I think crying babies, and loud-talking passengers to other passengers are worse than allowing a skype phone call. Why not have an area on the plane for skype calls or have certain times of the flight allowing skpye calls? I could understand banning the calls on a red-eye, but why ban calls if everyone is awake?