On an airplane at 50000 feet that is ten miles up, so too far away from cell towers on the ground, plus the metal plane acts as a Faraday cage blocking almost all cell signal.
Even if the reporter held his phone up against the window, and got a tiny data signal, at 500 mph it would be switching towers every few seconds and would disconnect.
Wifi provided by the plane would have outside antennas picking up Internet from satellites. They turned off the wifi on the plane because they knew this was about to break.
Not true.
The very simple observation is that my cell phone works just fine inside when the plane is sitting on the ground. Cell phone signals have a wavelength a less than 10 inches, they go right through the windows in the plane.