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Alaska Airlines - another first?

Spektor – Tue, 2007 – 09 – 18 10:32

If you'd ask a group of passengers if cell-phone calls should be allowed on flights, you would receive instant protest. No one wants to sit next to a chatterbox teenager or, worse, an angry business man with a bluetooth for a five hour flight. You ask about WiFi, however, and you would receive instant excitment. Emails, surfing, news, chatting — Americans want to be connected.

 

As the airline biz gets increasingly competitive, is inflight Internet access the next competitive edge? Alaska Airlines thinks so:

Alaska Airlines today announced it plans to launch inflight wireless Internet service next year based on Row 44's satellite-based broadband connectivity solution. Alaska made the announcement in Toronto at the 28th Annual World Airline Entertainment Association Conference and Exhibition. The airline will test Row 44's system on a next-generation Boeing 737 aircraft in spring 2008 and, based on the trial's outcome, plans to equip its 114-aircraft fleet.

The technology will provide customers with a unique entertainment and business network at 35,000 feet. Passengers with Wi-Fi-enabled devices, such as laptop computers, PDAs, smartphones and portable gaming systems, will have high-speed access to the Internet, e-mail, virtual private networks and stored inflight entertainment content.

"Bringing broadband Internet access to the skies is one of the most important things we can do to enhance the experience of both business and leisure customers," said Steve Jarvis, Alaska Airlines' vice president of sales, marketing and customer experience. "We're moving ahead with testing and ultimately plan to bring wireless broadband to our whole fleet."

Unlike air-to-ground services, Row 44's satellite-based system is designed to function over land, water and across international borders, enabling service throughout Alaska's route system in Alaska, the Lower 48 states, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico.

Customers connect to the system through wireless hotspots installed inside the aircraft cabin. A light-weight radome mounted on top of the aircraft houses an antenna, which receives and transmits signals through the Ku-band satellite system.

Alaska plans to become the first US airline with such connectivity, although American and Virgin America are planning similar services through an air-to-ground platform provided by AirCell. Row 44's system will rely on high-earth-orbit satellites, providing continuous coverage in remote areas and over water (it is Alaska Airlines, after all). Both systems can be easily installed in short sessions, lessening the aircraft down-time.

Alaska has a history of innovation. They were the first North American airline to offer online ticketing (1995) and online check-in (1999). Oh, and they paint salmon on some of their planes. Cool.

If history is our guide, similar in-flight Internet platforms will be picked up by other carriers in short-order. The WSJ (subcription-only) mentions that Southwest is considering the service. And the always active rumor-mill at Airliners.net is predicting a big JetBlue announcement in October (inflight Internet, perhaps?).

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Comments

Alaska aircraft

That's a "salmon thirty salmon" they've got there!

 

Rocco Fanucci – Tue, 2007 – 09 – 18 11:51
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AeroSat and Hughes Technology

The low-profile radome antennas will be provided by AeroSat, according to TMCnet:

AeroSat will provide the satellite antenna and additional RF components for Row 44's broadband system in commercial aircraft. Row 44's system will use AeroSat’s 2-way KU antennas and high power amplifiers.
 
Additionally, the system will leverage AeroSat's low-loss radome which is operating on more than 20 aircraft types and has been installed by most major installation facilities.
 
Jim Costello, Row 44's vice president of engineering, explained that the company optimizes its system development and minimizes its operational risks by using a single vendor for the entire RF chain. AeroSat was chosen for its ability to provide all the RF components. AeroSat’s experience with fuselage-mounted antennas and their technological leadership in KU antennas were also factors in the decision.

“We have years of experience in fielding antenna systems for KU-band satellite communications,” said William McNary, AeroSat's vice president of business development, in a statement.
 
McNary added: “We're proud to be a major contributor to the Row 44 solution, and we're thrilled to join with Row 44 to field this competitive solution.”
 
The lightweight AeroSat antenna provides unmatched performance that optimizes effective data transfer rates. AeroSat's antenna is scheduled for initial system testing this month, and will be on display for both AeroSat and Row 44 at next week's WAEA annual meeting in Toronto, Canada.
 
The compact, lightweight, simple to install and maintain Row 44 Broadband System may be integrated with existing in-flight entertainment systems. As the system can be installed in two short sessions, it minimizes aircraft downtime.

 

What about securing the satellite bandwidth for this system? That's what the satcom operators are trying pinpoint. Leasing a full transponder is not an expense to be taken lightly -- and the market for Ku-band is pretty tight in the U.S. According to TelecomWeb (subscription), the Alaska Airlines system will use satellite bandwidth provided by HughesNet, which has lots of bandwidth across many satellites via several operators:

Alaska Airlines yesterday took the wraps off a scheme under which it may become the first U.S. airline to offer satellite-based broadband to passengers, courtesy of a small curiously-named startup called Row 44 and Hughes Network Systems. Row 44, which has crafted a system that even supports VPNs and Blackberry e-Mail for business travelers, to say nothing of IPTV, thinks it can win where the mighty Boeing and its Connexion service failed.

Alaska Airlines and Row 44, a privately held startup based in Westlake Village, California, said that the airline will begin testing Row 44 gear on a Boeing 737 jet next Spring and, assuming it works, then plans to equip its entire 114-aircraft fleet by the end of 2009. It had been known for several months that Row 44 had its first customer on the hook (Satellite News, May 21), but just which airline had been kept tightly under wraps.

Alaska and Row 44 didn't disclose the pricing model they are planning to use, but earlier reports indicated a charge of about $10 per flight for a passenger to use the service, and possibly less than that. That contrasts sharply with the $10 for an hour, and $30-$40 for an entire flight, that the Boeing Connexion service had been charging. The high price of Connexion service is one of the key reasons blamed for its demise (TelecomWeb news break, Aug. 17, 2006), with Boeing footing a reputed billion dollar loss as a result.

Row 44 says that its service can survive at far lower fees because of a far lower overhead, particularly since it is buying Ku broadband service from Hughes Network Systems, rather than attempting to maintain its own global satellite network. Its hardware is also claimed to be cheaper, lighter and easier to install than was Connexion. The system, for instance, weighs only 130 pounds and the radome is only seven inches high and 26 inches in width.

The service that Row 44 is promising is 81 Mb/s to the plane, to be shared among all passengers using the service. 802.11 b/g will be supported, as well as Picocells for cellular service, should the use of cellular voice service be permitted on planes. A second channel can deliver 100 channels of IPTV. In addition to providing service to passengers, the Row 44 system is being touted for a wide range of uses by the airlines in conducting their business, including cabin crew and flight operations.

"Bringing broadband Internet access to the skies is one of the most important things we can do to enhance the experience of both business and leisure customers," said Steve Jarvis, Alaska Airlines' vice president of sales, marketing and customer experience. "We're moving ahead with testing and ultimately plan to bring wireless broadband to our whole fleet."

With the Row 44 deal, Alaska Airlines joins a growing number of carriers both in the U.S. and internationally that have been signing up for various schemes to deliver broadband to their passengers. In the U.S. AirCell, whose service is air-to-ground (ATG) and thus won't work over water, landed American Airlines as its first announced customer (Broadband Business Forecast, Aug. 7) and has also now signed up the recently-launched Virgin Atlantic.Southwest Airlines is also said to be closely watching the initial AirCell experiences. Alaska and Row 44 are making a big deal, though, of the difference between the ATG system and satellite broadband which, the pointedly note, can cover all of the routes to the 92 cities served by Alaska and its subsidiary Horizon Air, a network that includes Alaska, the lower 48 states, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico.

Internationally, though, competing satellite systems have been popping up one after the other. Among others Australia's Qantas signed a pact with SITA and Airbus joint venture OnAir to start offering on-board broadband using Panasonic Avionics hardware (TelecomWeb news break, July 25). Ryanair Holdings PLC and Air France-KLM SA are also slated to test the OnAir system. And word out of Germany is that Lufthansa - the only airline that really went head-over-heels about Connexion, equipping its 65-plane long-haul fleet - is in talks with Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile to re-equip its fleet for broadband, and re-use the Connexion gear already installed in its planes. Reportedly, Lufthansa is talking about a $100 million program.

 

Rocco Fanucci – Thu, 2007 – 09 – 20 06:04
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