This is not an entirely bad thing. But I would like to see restrictions.
For one, I wish the service would be limited to only text (SMS). However, we know that's not going to happen, so data services (MMS, internet and data) will need to be provided.
I would also hope the cost is fairly high (think about as high or more than a typical airline phone service), so that should limit the amount of use (except perhaps on business-heavy flights). I'd also think about absolute caps per mobile number per flight (e.g. a limit of a certain number of SMS messages and/or a certain amount (KB) of data per mobile number per flight), but I can't quite see how this can be implemented (nor whether this is reasonable).
I would expect too that phones should be advised to be set to silent during flight as a courtesy to other pax. It wouldn't be enshrined as a law, but a condition of carriage.
What I am fearing is that this feature will go online (no pun intended) but then people will complain about the costs. Lame excuses, of course, like "I didn't know it cost that much", "My phone bill is $1000s", "You should've told me it cost this much - or implemented a cap", blah blah blah - you know the type of mindless, brain-gouging drivel I'm talking about.
Noise and privacy aren't as big issues as you think. Noise you would hope would only be people tapping away or hitting the keys of their phone; not much different to a business flight full of execs with laptops out attacking the keyboard. Privacy should be disclaimed to the same degree as that of regular telecommunications on the ground. And caveat emptor if you're going to be attempting to transmit confidential information that someone else might see you do (i.e. why the hell would you do it).
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