Mile High Wi-Fi - Who is AirCell LLC?
(Page 2 of 4 )
With AirCell being the exclusive service provider to in-flight passengers on
American Airlines flights, they face a lot of restrictions and requirements from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Both of these agencies are the governing bodies over wireless signals transferred through the airwaves among aircraft flying over the United States. The president and CEO of AirCell, Jack W. Blumenstein, is honored to have exclusive rights to the broadband airwaves in aircraft, and he says
that this is a "...historic event in the airborne telecommunications industry."
With headquarters in the small town of Louisville, Colorado, AirCell LLC is not new to the airborne telecommunications industry. They currently have over 1,500
aircraft equipped with their products which range from NEXRAD radar equipment to their exclusive airborne cellular network -- the only cellular network ever authorized by the FCC. They eventually hope to develop a technology which will allow passengers to safely use their cell phones in-flight.
AirCell LLC was founded back in 1991, and since then has taken off (no pun intended). They now hold over 30 patents for their innovative airborne
telecommunications technology, and they continue to grow. They eventually became the exclusive provider of in-flight cellular service, and now will become the exclusive provider of Wi-Fi service during flights starting in 2008.
AirCell has demonstrated how their technology will work on aircraft, which is
part of the reason they have won the bid to be the exclusive provider of Wi-Fi service. The simplest way of describing the technology which AirCell will put into place for the aircraft to be Wi-Fi compatible is that antennas will be placed on the plane and many towers will be placed on the ground which will send a signal to these antennas on the plane, thus making the plane a "hot spot" for wireless Internet. Three antennas will be placed on the outside of the plane which will pick up the wireless signals from the towers on the ground.
Antennas
AirCell has said that they will be placing about 80-100 new towers across the
country in which to transfer the wireless signal to the equipped airplanes. They hope that the many new towers, once put into place across the U.S., will help to eliminate "dead spots" while in-flight. In all, the additional equipment placed onto these aircraft will add an additional 100 pounds, and it will cost about
$100,000 to outfit the planes for wireless Internet connectivity. AirCell claims that all of this additional equipment can easily be installed to the aircraft in one day.
Next: Features, Cost, Availability >>
More Opinions Articles
More By Joe Eitel
