Inflight Wireless slowly but surely moving down the runway
Posted Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:21:57 EDT by Jake Saunders
OnAir, headquartered in Switzerland and joint owned by Airbus and SITA, has announced that a record 10,000 airline trips have now taken place that permitted the use of wireless communications onboard. The number of airlines have steadily burgeoned:
Air Asia, AirAsia X, Airblue, British Airways, bmi, Jazeera, Kingfisher, Oman Air, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, Ryanair, Shenzhen Airlines, TAM, TAP and Wataniya Airways.
The inflight wireless market that has been trapped by a groundless sense of fear of being stuck next to a perennially chatty person who will not put the phone down. The reality is inflight communications charges will keep all but the very seriously wealthy off the phone for long periods of time.
In this world of anytime, anywhere communications, it is maddening one cannot send txt messages or browse the internet and check email. Concerns over interfence and security have been shown to be without merit.
The main stumbling block is aircraft communications links. Especially over the oceans. Current satellite infrastructure has had limited capacity which impacts pricing. Air to ground terrestrial base-station transceivers and licenses are changing the cost model. New satellites will be launched over the next 5 to 10 years.
No one wants to get onto a plane for 5 hours and be greeted by 200 jabbering away passengers, but on the other hand, if I am going to be couped up for 5 hours on a plane. I want to use it to clear out my Inbox and tell my wife the budget airline is going to be late in arrival.
Blog based on an ABI Insight.
The inflight wireless market that has been trapped by a groundless sense of fear of being stuck next to a perennially chatty person who will not put the phone down. The reality is inflight communications charges will keep all but the very seriously wealthy off the phone for long periods of time.
In this world of anytime, anywhere communications, it is maddening one cannot send txt messages or browse the internet and check email. Concerns over interfence and security have been shown to be without merit.
The main stumbling block is aircraft communications links. Especially over the oceans. Current satellite infrastructure has had limited capacity which impacts pricing. Air to ground terrestrial base-station transceivers and licenses are changing the cost model. New satellites will be launched over the next 5 to 10 years.
No one wants to get onto a plane for 5 hours and be greeted by 200 jabbering away passengers, but on the other hand, if I am going to be couped up for 5 hours on a plane. I want to use it to clear out my Inbox and tell my wife the budget airline is going to be late in arrival.
Blog based on an ABI Insight.