Four Airlines Plan to Connect their passengers to the internet

American airlines,Alaska Airlines,Virgin Ameria & Jetblue -these four airlines are goinfg to start providing internet access to all their passengers soon.

American Airlines passengers will be able to connect to the Web during their flights using any device that has 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi capabilities.

American Airlines began testing Wi-Fi capabilities on its fleet of Boeing 767-200 aircraft in August. The goal is to provide broadband service to all passengers starting in 2008.

Aircell, a global airline telecom provider based in Itasca, Ill will provide technical infrastructure for this.

A satellite-based 802.11b/g Wi-Fi connection for any laptops, smart phones and PDAs. These devices, says Alaska Airlines, will have access to the Internet, e-mail and VPNs, as well as stored in-flight entertainment. The in-flight system will connect to a satellite through an antenna placed atop the aircraft.

The airline is still testing the Wi-Fi connection on its Boeing 737 aircraft. Ideally, the company hopes to have Wi-Fi connections on all 144 of its planes up and running by spring 2008.

Row 44, a Westlake Village, Calif.-based airline telecom provider, which says it can offer in-flight downlink speeds of 81Mbps and uplink speeds of 1.6 Mbps.

Air-to-ground broadband Internet connection for 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi enabled devices. Additionally, the airline's Red Inflight Entertainment network will allow customers to use a wide variety of instant messaging services on their seatbacks, including MSN messenger, Google talk, Yahoo! messenger, Skype and AIM.

Virgin America first announced its in-flight broadband service plan in September, and the company hopes to have its all of its planes connected "sometime in 2008."
Virgin America will be the second major U.S. airline to employ Aircell to build its in-flight network.

Currently, the airline is running a trial that will give passengers free e-mail and instant-messaging service on one of its Airbus A320 planes starting on Dec. 11. Run through a partnership between JetBlue, Yahoo! and Research in Motion, the trial will allow passengers with Yahoo! e-mail accounts, as well as Blackberry users, to access e-mail and send instant messages. Blackberry users will have to connect to the network through Wi-Fi, however, as the FCC doesn't allow mobile calls to take place on planes.

If the trial goes well, JetBlue is expected to begin working toward giving its customers full Wi-Fi enabled Internet access some time over the next year.

LiveTV, who will provide technical infrastructure for this
a wholly owned subsidiary of JetBlue that won rights to 1 MHz of the 800-MHz spectrum last year.