I think we both agree for the most part then. cellphone pico cells on planes are pretty much pointless. However, I was under the impression that a cell tower's wave pattern went out in a downward arc in 360 degrees and not up. This is why they had to run the pico cells in those very tall sky scrapers in tokyo and hong kong. They definitely weren't 2 miles tall.
I work for boeing and wasn't going to mention it but now that you did... I got to use it on the boeing "connexion demo plane" in seattle. I logged into AIM, yahoo and msn and then used the vonage 'soft-phone' to call my own cell. You're right, the airlines don't have the money. You'd be surprised at the cost for the equipment and bandwidth, it ain't cheap and connexion is supposedly the most affordable in the current market. Apparently, the international flights are more profitable and therefore allow for this additional expense of wifi equip and service. My hope is that the manufacturing costs go down with time and the domestic providers can afford to purchase it. After all, it shouldn't take too long to recoup the costs since most airlines are charging $30-$50 per flight.
