The Dubai-based Emirates Airline has postponed its plans to offer onboard mobile phone calling service, local newspaper Gulf News reported on Monday.

The Emirates airline has announced earlier a January launch date beginning with an outfitted Boeing 777, with full roll out throughout its fleet expected to take several years, the report said.

But the company now expects to introduce the service this year, a spokesperson of Emirates said.

Onboard mobile phone calling has the potential to disrupt navigation systems of planes and remains a contentious issue despite a new breed of in-flight systems which can control and reduce the signal and beam it down to terrestrial networks.

Although AeroMobile, a Britain-based company developing the service for Emirates and other airlines, has received clearances from 30 countries to offer the technology over their airspace, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided last week to keep a ban in place on onboard mobile phone calling due to concerns the new systems would jam land-based telecommunications, the report said.

The FCC said it may "reconsider this issue in the future if appropriate technical data is available for our review."

Established in 1985 by the Dubai government, the Emirates Airline currently operates services to more than 80 destinations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Oceania and North America.

Source: Xinhua