In a recent post, Staying in Touch In Flight, we commented on the loss of Boeing Connexion.
As Airwise news reports here, part of the problem was that the Boeing equipment, which was satellite based, was large, heavy, and expensive. Aircell, which purchased part of Verizon Airfone’s bandwidth, plans to start service by the end of next year. Their equipment is light and based on cellular technology, and thus they predict it will cost less than Boeing’s unsuccessful offering.
Information Week commented here on how, despite so many people wanting internet service inflight, the demand seems to have not materialized. This surprises many…but there was no coverage in the United States, and with only 12 airlines signing on for limited and often unreliable service, we can only hope that offerings from Aircell, as well as Livetv, which has yet to produce a tentative proposal, will be superior, more cost-efficient, and be better adopted.
Perhaps, as Information Week further ponders , here, we should forego laptops entirely and links to several useful resources for those who might wish to leave their laptop behind, and the possible changes that security increases will make to the laptop experience.