Air Canada Adopts U.S. AirCell's In Flight Internet Service

Will airline passengers want a Prodigy, or true broadband for in-flight Internet?

From The Canadian Press: Air Canada will be offering some passengers the chance to surf the Internet, check e-mail and watch videos on their laptops or personal electronics devices on a limited basis on flights to the U.S. West Coast, starting next spring.

The Internet service is being provided to Air Canada under an agreement with U.S.-based Aircell, which also counts American and Delta airlines among its customers.Aircell's Gogo service provides broadband Internet service to aircraft from a network of cell towers based on the ground in the United States. As a result, flights over Canada won't be able to use Gogo until the network is expanded.

My take on AirCell's growth and the aviation broadband space in general.

As users start using AirCell’s service and the company has to share their limited bandwidth across several planes at once, we suspect that the connection will start to feel like old-fashioned “dialup,” and consumers will quickly voice their disappointment. Their solution can't scale.

Another aviation broadband service is just starting to get headlines.

Voyant Aviation Broadband can provide up to 35 Mbps to EACH aircraft in a full fleet. This compares to AirCell's 2 Mbps

Voyant offers 10 times the capacity of other terrestrial-based solutions at a similar cost. It’s also about 10 – 100 times cheaper on a per-bit basis than satellite-based systems.

Voyant has a partnership with Harris, and Harris is the largest supplier of communications equipment to the FAA. Harris’s software-defined radio works well with Voyant’s super-advanced modem technology.

Voyant promises biggest bandwidth yet.

“We aim to deliver 10-35Mbit/sec to every aircraft in the fleet, at a cost per bit at least ten times less than that of a satellite-based system,” Steffen Koehler, chief marketing officer of Voyant Aviation Broadband

The company has begun to generate evidence to back up its claims.

It says that in flight tests during July its pilot-production software-defined radio and production-standard modem supported data rates of up to 50Mbit/sec over a range of 100 miles between the aircraft and a ground station in Florida.

Voyant's Aviation Broadband service...cleared for takeoff.

American Airlines Kicks Off AirCell's In-Flight Internet Service

The "Prodigy" of aviation broadband service is taking off.


It's great that we are getting some type of Internet service on a plane. However, due to Aircell's limited bandwidth and scalability issues, I think we will see a much faster aviation broadband service leapfrog Aircell. We all know what happened to Prodigy.

From Reuters American Airlines kicks off in-flight Internet service.


AMR Corp's American Airlines began offering Internet access on long-haul domestic flights on Wednesday, making American the first U.S. airline to offer full in-flight broadband. The world's largest airline said its passengers on Boeing 767-200 aircraft can pay $12.95 for Internet access on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami.

American's mobile broadband service, which is called Gogo, is provided by AirCell. Each Gogo session includes full Internet access.

Why Prodigy?

There are approximately 2000 planes in air at any one time in US or Europe and Aircell couldn't accommodate even a fraction of these planes.

I would keep an eye out for Harris Corp and their recently introduced aviation broadband service.

Harris, which does a ton of business with the FAA, recently announced an Air-to-ground solution (ATG) that has 10xs the capacity at same or lower cost. In most cases they offer 10-50x more bandwidth, 5-100xs lower cost per bit, and speeds up to 35 Mbps.

More discussions on aviation broadband.

Aviation Broadband Ready For Takeoff In The U.S.

Aircell one step closer to its goal of bringing inflight mobile broadband connectivity to airline passengers. Aircell is doing a great job of building the infrastructure for the aviation broadband industry, but will it be enough?

Aircell's internet service is expected to offer 2 Mbps speeds to customers.

Harris Corp, a large communications equipment supplier to the FAA, just announced their aviation broadband solution with speeds up to 35 Mbps per plane at this aviation conference.

Is Aircell doing the heavy lifting for Harris?

Aircell Receives Two FAA Approvals Needed for Inflight Mobile Broadband

The two approvals include a STC (supplemental type certificate), permitting installation and operation of the company's ATG (air-to-ground) network on commercially operated B-767-200s, and a PMA (parts manufacture approval) that authorizes the manufacture of aircraft parts at Aircell's Bensenville, Illinois, facility.

The important approvals follow Aircell's completion of its nationwide wireless ATG network in January and a demonstration flight across the U.S. at the end of March to show its operational readiness.

Aircell and American Airlines completed the installation of ATG technology on a commercial aircraft in January, and American is now completing the equipment installations on its remaining 14 B-767s which are expected to go live sometime this summer.

This high-speed broadband Internet service is made possible by AirCell's unique air-to-ground network, which uses the latest technology to transmit and receive data between the ground and the aircraft. Speeds will be similar to what you experience in your home or office with DSL.

More on aviation broadband.

Aviation BroadBand Space Heating Up

The aviation broadband space is heating up.

Lufthansa and American Airlines launch broadband initiatives. In addition, a new aviation broadband technology player emerges.

Lufthansa adding in-flight broadband by 2008

Lufthansa is apparently continuing the airborne scramble to get customers connected, announcing that with the help of T-Mobile it will be reinstating its broadband service (formerly from Connexion) to its long-haul flights by 2008. Connexion was a $600m plus aviation broadband project from Boeing that was scrapped due to cost and demand issues.

In a related story, Panasonic Avionics said it was ready to pick up where Boeing's Connexion left off. Executives with Panasonic said they have a new business model that will allow them to go forward with as few as 50 planes -- and to expect an announcement from airlines within the next few months.

Some of those first airline customers for the Panasonic system will be ones who had Connexion installed.

Today, AirCell, the leading wireless data and voice communications provider in business aviation, announced it is teaming with American Airlines to test broadband services with passengers across the U.S. beginning in 2008.

AirCell's new Broadband Internet service will allow business and leisure passengers to check e-mail, surf the Web, tap into an office network and stay current on the latest news, using their own Wi-Fi enabled laptops, PDAs, iPhones(R), BlackBerrys(R) and portable gaming systems -- while in flight.

Passenger testing will be conducted on American Airlines fleet of Boeing 767-200 aircraft that primarily fly transcontinental routes. As the first to launch in-flight broadband capabilities, American and AirCell are pioneering the last frontier of domestic Internet service.

This high-speed broadband Internet service is made possible by AirCell's unique air-to-ground network, which uses the latest technology to transmit and receive data between the ground and the aircraft.

Pricing will mirror what you would pay at any ground based Wi-Fi hotspot, and speeds will be similar to what you experience in your home or office with DSL.

While this is a step in the right direction to tap into the millions of potential customers, I can't help but think that a couple hundred surfers on this one Wi-Fi connection will be disappointed with their surfing experience.

There are other technologies being developed, that could allow much faster speeds and disruptive pricing for aviation broadband.

A different method that is a contender in this space is Adapt4. Adapt4, is a supplier of efficient cognitive radio solutions that exploit unused frequency bandwidth in an FCC-certified manner. They are partnering with a bandwidth-efficient modem chip to offer a cost-effective and fast aviation broadband solution.

A multi-billion dollar market awaits for companies that connect and deliver relevant content to millions of captive consumers.