In-flight Broadband
 

Today, January 15th, Lufthansa began offering broadband Internet service on Boeing 747-400s, beginning with the daily service between Frankfurt and Washington. In the first quarter of 2003, the airlines company will also begin providing Wi-Fi LAN ( 802.11a) service in over 50 lounges.

Connexion by Boeing, a unit of Boeing, in Seattle, Washington, will provide the satellite-based data communications service in the air. The service offera a 20Mbps pipe to the aircraft and 1Mbps from the aircraft, shared between the passengers and the crew. Connection speed per PC should average about 256K.

First-class and business-class travelers can plug their notebooks aircraft's onboard LAN via their seats or, alternatively, use Wi-Fi. Economy-class passengers can connect to the system with Wi-Fi-equipped notebooks. The aircraft carries 50 laptops for customer use. The service is free for the first 3 months, there after the cost is expected to be around $35 a flight.

Connexion has enlisted several other airline customers, including BA, JAL and SAS. BA plans to roll out the service in February.

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Reliable wireless broadband anywhere on the planet at anytime? :p

Am aware that boeing have been trialling this for some time now. Would be interested to know if the practicalites ultimately live up to the marketing hype as given above. Saw a tv program recently that seemed to suggest limitations to the technology.

It's amazing - broadband on a jet (if you're a journalist interchange that for turboprop) at 40,000 feet, but can BT or anyone else deliver it on dry-land in remote areas, can they hell!