There's just no way to know without further study, and I don't see why further study is a bad idea in this case. Testing 100 cell phones on a plane of many makes, models, and ages while monitoring a range of avionics equipment (with and without a picocell on board) would be a great start. I'm willing to wait; what's the rush in getting cell phones used on board, anyway?

Further, this article states in an odd way that Wi-Fi costs $500,000 to install on a plane while a picocell will cost $100,000. Not really. What the author seems to have meant to say is that Boeing's satellite-based Internet access system that uses Wi-Fi for distribution on a plane costs $500,000. In talking to several firms that hope to win the air-to-ground spectrum auction that the FCC is running in early May, the cost per plane will be much closer to the lower number than the higher one. The weight of equipment and complexity of gear is much lower, and retrofitting is thus faster and easier, too.