One opinion on cell phone communication.
[link to www.sianews.com]

The cell phone calls from the aircraft could not have happened. I am a National Security Agency trained Electronic Warfare specialist, and am qualified to say this. My official title: MOS33Q10, Electronic Warfare Intercept Strategic Signal Processing/Storage Systems Specialist, a highly skilled MOS which requires advanced knowledge of many communications methods and circuits to the most minute level. I am officially qualified to place severe doubt that ordinary cell phone calls were ever made from the aircraft.

It was impossible for that to have happened, especially in a rural area for a number of reasons.

When you make a cell phone call, the first thing that happens is that your cell phone needs to contact a transponder. Your cell phone has a max transmit power of five watts, three watts is actually the norm. If an aircraft is going five hundred miles an hour, your cell phone will not be able to 1. Contact a tower, 2. Tell the tower who you are, and who your provider is, 3. Tell the tower what mode it wants to communicate with, and 4. Establish that it is in a roaming area before it passes out of a five watt range. This procedure, called an electronic handshake, takes approximately 45 seconds for a cell phone to complete upon initial power up in a roaming area because neither the cell phone or cell transponder knows where that phone is and what mode it uses when it is turned on. At 500 miles an hour, the aircraft will travel three times the range of a cell phone´s five watt transmitter before this handshaking can occur. Though it is sometimes possible to connect during takeoff and landing, under the situation that was claimed the calls were impossible. The calls from the airplane were faked, no if´s or buts.