In message , at 07:15:25 on
Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Robert Neville remarked:
"The aircraft, an Airbus A340, is fitted with a system which
stops mobiles from interfering with a plane's electronics.

Well, sort of. The aircraft is equiped with a pico cell (miniature cell tower)
that instructs the phones to reduce their power output to the minimum. There's
no active interference protection.

The interference protection is achieved by that action of "reducing
power". Which is caused by the picocell. It's just different ways of
saying the same thing.
--
Roland Perry