The ‘Broadband in the Sky’ concept is finding its way to India. Early next year, passengers aboard planes of several Indian carriers will be able to access the Internet to surf, chat and watch television on a broadband connection, reports The Financial Express.
India’s private carriers including Kingfisher Airlines, a JetBlue clone; and other fast growing carriers such as Jet Airways and Air Sahara, plans to provide Internet connectivity at 35,000 feet. The state-owned carriers Air India and Indian Airlines are going to offer these services.
“We plan to offer Connexion, Boeing’s real-time, high-speed Internet and data communications service,” said Jitender Bhargava, Air India’s Executive Director. Kingfisher Airlines has announced plans to have live television on its flights by next March. Its fleet of Airbus A320s will be fitted with a satellite dish and live television will be available at every seat.
That’s good news for Connexion, which the WSJ has reported has done poorly, and could have cost Boeing as much as a $1 billion. But one problem is that U.S. carriers reportedly didn’t show as much interest as Boeing expected, and the new Indian customers might not be enough to keep Connexion within Boeing’s longterm plans.
In India it’s a different story. India is currently going through an aviation boom, much like the one we say in the late 1950s and 1960s in the US. According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, domestic market in India will add five million passengers every year for the next five years, with the overall market ballooning to about 45 million passengers by 2010.
It is certainly a large enough market. It is ironic that these moves are coming at a time when the entire nation is starved for bandwidth. It is causing enough concern that even the slow moving Department of Telecommunications is thinking about cutting bandwidth prices by 30-to-40%.
The telecom regulator recently informed the department that bandwidth prices in India were high because the country didn’t allow equal access at cable landing stations for new companies.
DoT is mulling over plans to open landing stations of international long distance companies to rival providers’ submarine cables and regulate access charges for the cables, The Financial Express reports. This would boost new entrants’ business and could lead to a 30-40 percent cut in bandwidth costs.
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6 comments so far
11:20 AM PT
At what cost to the consumer? That’s the question.
11:41 AM PT
Why the hell haven’t US carriers shown interest? Other than seats that were comfortable, I can’t think of an upgrade I’d want more on my plane.
8:21 PM PT
Is it 128KBPs broadband ;) Ask the Indian operators to first provide wireline broadband to homes at atleast 512KBPs with an uptime of atleast 1 month and then dream big.
No doubt India is a cheap telecom market but lacks QoS.
2:09 AM PT
As an aside - it is not fair to call Kingfisher as a JetBlue clone. Kingfisher is hardly a no-frills low cost carrier. Its pretty much a full service airline unlike JetBlue.
12:52 PM PT
Its not fair as previous poster pointed out to call Kingfisher a clone of JetBlue. I have used both the airlines and its entirely different where Kingfisher offers a Kingfisher class much better than the average economy class ticket and is price atleast twice/ thrice the lowest price of low cost airline(Air Deccan).
Agree with the Convergence’s post on broadband. Convergence, been using broadband here in Chennai for about 5 years now and found Airtel Broadband( my current provider) to be most reliable. Their current speed is 256 KBPS and its not too bad been most reliable so far.
8:12 PM PT
It is unlikely that Connexion will stay in business too long, even given the projected Indian broadband market-in-the-sky. Part of the reason Connexion did not do so well in the US was because the service was not simply worth it. It was slow and expensive.
Much of the aviation boom, Shailaja, has occured due to the availability of cheap airfare. It is unlikely that those who avail themselves of cheap airfare for personal fligts will be using Connexion. However, for busy executives who can put it on the company tab, Connexion might be a good option. However, there are good reasons to believe that the number of “road warrior executives” in the US is comparable and a market that size could not sustain Connexion. So, the real question is, ‘Why did Connexion not work out so well in the US and why won’t these challenges exist in India?”
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