The system being proposed involves a cell "tower" itself which is inside the aircraft. This does a number of things... first of all it causes the individual cell phones to drop down to the lowest possible power, and secondly it allows all communications to them to be routed through a single path.
This eliminates a lot of the emission problems with cellphones causing induced noise in avionics. It also eliminates a lot of the cellphone infrastructure problems with one cell being able to talk to a dozen or more towers at the same time.
But, it requires a continuous link from the "tower" in the plane to a ground station through which calls are routed.
Technically, I think the system is a good idea and it solves pretty much all of the technical issues that make cell phone use in planes a bad idea. Socially, I think it's terrible and the only good thing about being on an airliner is being free of people yammering on cellphones. But technical solutions to social problems never work.
--scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."