GigaOM » inflight broadband

For LTE sky may not be the limit

Om Malik — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:58:17 +0000

Most of us who fly on commercial Internet-enabled flights, struggle with the connections, and slow speeds result in surly tweets. So when I read that Ericsson has successfully tested 4G connections on a moving jet-plane, I am hopeful about the future.

Ericsson tested a LTE/4G internet connection on board of a jet plane flying at speeds of 700 kilometers per hour (435 mph) at low altitiudes (300 meters above ground) and were able to get about 19 megabits per second. Given that commercial planes fly at over approximately 9100 meters (or about 30,000 feet), the test is no where near the real life, but still notable.

The test was conducted on two laptops with LTE dongles. A web cam was connected to the PCs and the video was streamed to the ground team. The video stream worked well, barring a few incidents when the connections were handed over from one base-station to another. The handover from two base stations was pretty good even at 500 km/h.

Clearly, we are not going to see this in commercial deployments anytime soon, but there is one upside to it all: LTE/4G will work really well on ultra high-speed trains especially the kind in Europe and Japan.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Urban Wolf a Near-Perfect 21st Century Thriller

Liz Shannon Miller — Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:28 +0000

When I saw Urban Wolf at last year’s ITVFest, it was being screened as part of an international drama block (sharing the slot with Oz Girl) — which worked, because the show is a truly international production.

Created by French director Laurent Touil Tartour, starring Hong Kong actor Vincent Sze, and now being distributed in America by Sony’s Crackle, Urban Wolf is a gripping thriller that stands out as proudly unique.

From Crackle: Forces

Some of Wolf‘s execution might emulate classic 1970s thrillers, but the concept is pure 21st century, playing nimbly with issues of privacy and paranoia. The set-up seems simple initially — American tourist Justin Case arrives in Paris only to find himself under surveillance by a deadly foe. But over the show’s 15 three-minute episodes, the mystery of who is watching Justin and why grows in complexity, as does the reason why Justin is in Paris to begin with.

Deliberately produced with the bare minimum of dialogue (making it possible for the show to play internationally with ease), sound design ends up playing a key role in the show’s success, communicating aurally what words make unnecessary. When a director can make even the eating of a potato chip seem malevolent (as occurs in the yet-to-premiere episode 7), you know you’ve watching something special.

However, while style and production value matter, a project like this lives or dies with its lead actor. Fortunately, Sze is an engaging lead who manages to draw you in even when maintaining a poker face, though frankly he’s a better silent actor than a speaking one. (Fun bit of trivia: While in the show, Sze’s character claims not to speak French, in reality Sze moved to France at the age of 3 before returning to Hong Kong as an adult.)

Episodes 1-5 were released today as a block, which was a wise choice given that the end of episode 5 offers the first big clue to why Justin is being followed. But the remaining 10 episodes will be released on a daily basis.

If I were to critique anything about Wolf, it might be that the show plays best when viewed all at once, as opposed to an episode-by-episode basis — the morsels of story provided by each episode individually are almost too teasing at times.

But that just means I’d recommend stopping by Crackle on May 27, when the finale will premiere — because the last two episodes include a twist that takes the series to a new and dark place, one that practically demands a season 2.

Related GigaOM Pro content (subscription required): Should You Super-Syndicate Your Web Series?

US Airways Adds Gogo Inflight Internet Access

Om Malik — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:53:19 +0000

US Airways has become the latest carrier to launch Aircell’s Gogo Inflight Internet service. The service is currently available on just five US Airways’ planes but will be fully deployed on all 51 A321s in its fleet by June 1.

In addition to US Airways, Gogo is currently available on all AirTran Airways and Virgin America flights. It is also available on Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines flights.

Gogo, despite launching on multiple airlines, has been struggling to grow. The performance of the service on many popular routes such as New York-San Francisco has degraded considerably. I frankly think paying $12.95 for an ultra-slow connection for effectively four hours of flight time is a bum deal.

I’m also pretty sure that as the iPad launches and gains in popularity, we are only going to see further depreciation of the connection quality. Aircell recently raised $176 million in funding from an undisclosed group of investors.

Aircell Gets $176 Million for In-flight Broadband

Om Malik — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:02:01 +0000

Aircell, the Itasca, Ill. company behind the wildly hyped GoGo in-flight broadband, has raised $176 million in funds from an undisclosed group of investors. (Don’t worry — we asked, but they wouldn’t tell us who invested in the company.) The funds will be used for network expansion, among other things.

GoGo, which is currently available on more than 700 commercial aircraft, and has commitments from a total of nine airlines, needs to build out its network aggressively if it wants hype to ~~meet~~ match reality. As it has grown, GoGo’s connection quality has declined as the strain on its network has gone up because of increased usage.

In many ways, the hype around GoGo has met reality. The uptake of the service is pretty low at present. Some say it might be as low as six users per flight. I think the pricing has something to do with the reason why many travelers are not so keen on paying for in-flight broadband just yet. The low uptake might be the reason why Aircell is figuring out a way to sell the service to the carriers itself for more backend functions. The good news — if you can call it that — is that the competing Row44 service (on Southwest) is actually worse off.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Why GoGo In-flight Wi-Fi Is Garbage

Om Malik — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:10:45 +0000

Earlier this morning, when I got on a plane to visit Orlando, Fla., I thanked my stars when I found out that I was on a Delta flight with GoGo in-flight Wi-Fi. I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 3 a.m. to get to the airport and as a result was behind on my emails, tweets and blogging. A live connection would allow me to do it all. Once the plane was at cruising altitude, I signed up for the year-old GoGo service via a 30-day pass that cost me $30. Being the first one to sign on, I enjoyed a decent speed for the first 30 minutes or so, at which point the connection became unusable. GoGo became Oh no!

Why? Because more than two dozen people are sharing what is essentially a 3-megabit connection. I’m getting download speeds of 390 kilobits/second at best, and the upload speeds are even worse. I could handle slow speeds if the latency wasn’t so dismal; in various tests it ranged between 165 milliseconds and 275 milliseconds. I wonder how GoGo is going to offer movie downloads on its pokey little network. The arrival of LTE-based wireless broadband could change everything, of course, but I’m not holding my breath.

And therein lies the Achilles’ heel of in-flight broadband — for GoGo in particular. As more people start using the service more often, the end-user experience is going to degrade. And because GoGo uses cellular connections for backhaul, it can’t really go faster than the speed of cellular networks, which are notorious for their lack of latency. I think as more and more of our applications start demanding a semblance of “symmetric” broadband, services such as GoGo will start to lose their usefulness.

OK then — back to reading. This Wi-Fi thing clearly isn’t working out.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

After Long Delays, In-Flight Broadband Is Taking Off

Om Malik — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:30:56 +0000

In-flight broadband’s story so far has been similar to that of airplanes sitting on the runway, waiting for clearance to take flight. Despite a big push from Boeing and other major international carriers, in-flight broadband was stuck on ground, burning dollars like an idle plane burns gas. No more! Thanks to new surface-to-air technologies used by companies such as Aircell, the business is ready for takeoff.

Of course, airlines’ desperation to make money any which way they can has helped accelerate the rollout of GoGo-like services. In-Stat, a market research firm, predicts there will be 800 planes with in-flight broadband by the end of 2009 vs. just 25 in 2008, generating $47 million in global revenue. By 2012, In-Stat expects in-flight broadband will be a billion-dollar-a-year business, with demand for in-flight broadband equipment nearly doubling between 2009 and 2013. Indeed, airlines such as Virgin, American Airlines, Alaska and Delta are being super aggressive with their rollouts.

By 2013, In-Stat sees the number of annual in-flight broadband connects topping 200 million. “Connections from handheld devices will account for about 1/3 of connects, with notebook computers accounting for 2/3,” the firms predicts. On that point, I think they’re wrong. It will be the other way around. Using the iPhone/iPod Touch to connect and get emails is a much better and easier option than opening up a notebook.

Useful link: The GigaOM In-Flight Broadband Cheat Sheet.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

American Airlines Boosts In-flight Broadband Plans, to Add 300 More Planes

Om Malik — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:33:06 +0000

American Airlines, which has so far been offering the Gogo in-flight wireless broadband on nonstop flights between New York JFK and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami, says that it will add the service to an additional 300 planes over the next two years. American will install the Aircell system on its domestic MD-80 and Boeing 737-800 aircraft fleets, beginning with 150 MD-80 aircraft this year. I see this as a good way to capitalize on a captive audience with nowhere to go. With service that costs between $7.95 and $12.95 based on the length of the flight, it is one helluva racket. The downside of this good news: We need to update our In-Flight Broadband Cheat Sheet.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Alaska Airlines to Offer In-flight Internet Access

Om Malik — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:53:25 +0000

Alaska Airlines has started a trial of satellite broadband technology from California-based Row 44 that will allow customers to get — what else? — Internet when on the go. Row 44 had predicted commercial rollout of its service in 2009. This new service will be called Alaska Airlines Inflight Wi-Fi; the trial will begin on an afternoon flight between Seattle and San Jose, Calif., and will run for about 60 days. If successful, the airline will roll out the service to its entire fleet. Row 44 has tied up with Southwest Airlines and is challenging Aircell and its gogo service. Aircell has teamed up with Virgin America, American Airlines, Delta and others. Row 44 used Ku band satellites, while Aircell is based on an air-to-ground system. JetBlue-owned LiveTV and ViaSat are two other players vying to carve out a piece of the inflight broadband market. (Related: Inflight Broadband Cheat Sheet & Boeing, Boeing… Gone.)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

U.S. In-flight Broadband Is A-gogo by Spring

Om Malik — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:41:15 +0000

If you’re a frequent flier to New York from San Francisco or Los Angeles, or just like to jet down to Miami to get away from the bitter New York winter, then you’re one of the lucky people who will have in-flight broadband by this spring, according to Jack Blumenstein, president and CEO of Itasca, Ill.-based Aircell. The company is calling its in-flight broadband service gogo.

“For the first six months, there will more broadband-enabled flights out of San Francisco,” Blumenstein said when we met for coffee earlier today. Aircell’s first two airline customers, Virgin America (based in the Bay Area) and American Airlines, are said to be working around the clock to get their planes ready.

In the initial phase, 15 of American Airlines’ 767s will be broadband-enabled; it plans to eventually take that number to 500. Virgin, by comparison, is looking to wire up all of its planes; it wants to provide broadband access to every seat via its back-seat system. Virgin wants people without laptops to spend dollars on broadband, I guess.

Aircell is also in talks with other airlines, but Blumenstein refused to reveal their names. He did tell me what the service is going to cost: $12.95 for cross-country flights such as San Francisco to New York, and $9.95 for flights with durations of three hours or less. Airlines, with whom Aircell will share revenues, are hot and heavy about this service for two reasons: in-flight Broadband not only provides a way to boost margins, but is a great way to lure business passengers aware from other carriers.

Aircell is currently contemplating striking up corporate user agreements with companies like iPass, it also has plans to work with aggregators like T-Mobile and Boingo. And it’s developing special lower-tier plans for devices such as iPhones, as well as flat-rate plans for “frequent fliers.”

Gogo uses a ground-to-air system that allows small antennas on the planes to pick up signals being pumped out terrestrially. Aircell has 92 giant antennas spread across the country, most of which sit in the same antenna farms that are used by cellular carriers; they can pump data that can be picked up at 45,000 square feet on planes flying at 500 miles per hour in a 350-mile radius. Despite not being commercially available, the system is currently operational.

Aircell has a roughly 3 MHz slice of same spectrum that was occupied by the Airfone service, enough for the company to send signals at around 3 megabits per second. (Canada and Mexico are doing the same, which means the Gogo system will work across North America.) Using compression and on-board caching, Aircell’s Gogo customers will experience broadband speeds of 2 megabits per second, Blumenstein said. Having not seen or tested the system, I am not quite certain on how realistic a number that is.

The technology being used for radio transmissions is a customized version of Qualcomm’s EV-DO Rev A technology. Blumenstein said that they can migrate to Rev B or LTE if and when those higher-speed technologies become available. The base stations for the system come from ZTE Corp., the Chinese telecom hardware vendor that is desperately trying to make a name for itself in the U.S. market. Aircell is using technology developed by Meru Networks to ensure that the on-board systems don’t run into capacity issues and all passengers can connect with the on-board 802.11 routers.

Aircell expects to deploy about 500 antennas, enough to cover the entire country and support as many as 250,000 broadband users. “We think we have a cost advantage over satellite-based systems as we are using proven technologies that are already in deployment,” said Blumenstein.

Now let’s see if customers want to show up for this service.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.