F.C.C. Advances Plan for Faster In-Flight Wi-Fi

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday proposed auctioning off the rights to use newly available airwaves to provide better in-flight Wi-Fi connections, as the government agency seeks to improve the speed and lower the cost of Internet service on commercial flights.

The commission’s proposal is the first step toward a goal that it is likely to take a couple of years, at least, to reach: providing in-flight Internet service that can match or exceed the capabilities that most Americans have at home or can find in coffee shops.

The new format would use a more reliable system of contact between a plane and the ground, agency officials said, and should allow providers to offer more consistent service that is many times faster than the service that many Americans have in their homes.

Although it will be at least a couple of years before the new service is available, federal officials and people in the broadband business expressed excitement that the new format could free airline passengers from being captive to the expensive and rather slow Wi-Fi that is currently available on only some domestic flights.

“The reality is that we expect and often need to be able to get online 24/7, at home, in an office or on a plane,” Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, said at a meeting where the commission voted 4 to 0 to begin the necessary steps. “This will enable business and leisure travelers aboard aircraft in the United States to be more productive and have more choices in entertainment, communications and social media, and it could lower prices.”

The agency’s plan calls for the sale of one or more licenses to allow an Internet service provider to share certain airwaves with satellite communications companies. Those airwaves would then be used for an air-to-ground system of connections that employs cellphone towers.

Before the auction, the agency will have to decide how many licenses to grant in the 500-megahertz block of spectrum and what engineering rules will be required to prevent interference between the various services. The agency’s action Thursday kicks off the process by requesting public comment.

Roughly a quarter of daily domestic flights have Wi-Fi service, according to Routehappy.com, which tracks travel information. Another 12 percent of flights have trial service or offer service on a given route depending on the aircraft used. But it is not always easy to tell when booking a flight whether it will have Wi-Fi service, said John Walton, director of data for Routehappy.

In-flight service is now usually limited to about 3 megabits per second, per plane — barely half the speed of the average household DSL connection and one-third the average wired broadband speed. The new system will be faster in part because it will operate on a different band of spectrum, and in part because of the way it transmits signals.

Currently, there are two types of in-flight broadband service: satellite-based and air-to-ground. Satellite systems use antennas mounted on the top of planes to communicate with satellites. Air-to-ground systems send signals between a ground-based network and an antenna on the bottom of a plane.

The new system would share the 14.0-14.5 gigahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum, a 500-megahertz band that is far wider than the current 4-megahertz band used in air-to-ground systems. All of that means that the new system would be capable of transmitting data at up to 300 gigabits per second in combined service to all aircraft aloft.

“Air-to-ground connectivity is inherently less expensive than satellite systems,” said Mary Kirby, editor in chief of Airline Passenger Experience magazine. “The industry knows that they need to meet consumer demand for increased connectivity. It’s quite literally become the cost of doing business.”

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. The Satellite Industry Association said it had filed with the commission “detailed technical analyses that demonstrate that the proposed air-ground service would cause interference into the satellite services.”

Those services have first rights to the airwaves in question, which are used by media, public safety and American military customers for essential communications, the association said. Companies like Boeing, which makes satellites as well as planes, also oppose the proposal.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a commissioner who supported getting the proposal under way, said it was clear which way the requirements for connectivity were moving.

“In our hyperconnected age, we need and expect access to connectivity and content anytime and anywhere,” Ms. Rosenworcel said. “The world simply does not wait for us to get off the plane.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 10, 2013

An earlier version of this article characterized incorrectly the possible speeds of in-flight broadband Internet service under a proposal being considered by the F.C.C. The proposal envisions a combined service speed of up to 300 gigabits per second, to be shared among all the aircraft using the system at a given moment; individuals would not be able to access a 300-gigabit connection. The error was repeated in a picture caption. The earlier version also miscalculated a comparison of 300 gigabits per second to the average home broadband connection speed. The average home broadband connection is roughly 10 megabits per second in the United States. A 300-gigabit connection would be 30,000 times the average home speed, not 30 times.

Lil Wayne Hospitalized After In-Flight Medical Scare

 

Rapper Lil Wayne is currently recovering from what people are calling a "seizure" that occurred while on a private jet. The good people at TMZ broke the news, and have the full story HERE.

No one knows exactly WHAT it was . . . but THE STREETS say that earlier that day Weezy was sippin EXTRA HEAVY on that lean. And that it may have caused the health issues.

Lil Wayne released himself from the hospital a few hours later. Get better Weezy . . . and try and go easy on that LEAN bruh . . .

On the Road: In-Flight Entertainment Is at Crossroad

ONE morning last week, I strolled into the spacious, shiny exhibition space of Paramount Pictures at the annual trade show sponsored by the Airline Passenger Experience Association, a network of airlines and businesses and professionals who supply various in-flight comfort and entertainment services, from seats to software.

But a stern-looking woman from Paramount scowled at my name tag, saw that I was a reporter and chased me out. “This is private,” she hissed, as if I might be on the prowl for, say, inside information about Paramount’s deepest movie secrets.

Actually, all I was doing, along with about 2,500 others who attended the convention, was wandering among the scores of exhibitions, admiring a 64-inch digital cabin video monitor here, a cushy lie-flat airline bed with flashy remote controls there, a display of passenger earphones providing concert-hall fidelity over there.

If I had a take-away from the event, it was that in-flight entertainment is at a crossroad. At a time when about a third of passengers are flying with their own devices like tablets and smartphones, how do airlines respond?

Do premium carriers continue to invest heavily in hardware — in expensive in-seat audio and video systems that provide packaged offerings like hundreds of on-demand movies, television programs and video games, but need regular upgrading as technology improves?

Or do other carriers concentrate mostly on improving in-flight Wi-Fi for those passengers who prefer to use their own hardware? If so, do the airlines try to sell them licensed content like movies and video games, while somehow overcoming significant concerns by studios and other providers about piracy? And how do they address passenger discontent about slow, balky in-flight Wi-Fi service, not to mention complaints about the dearth of power outlets on airplanes?

Hollywood studios and other content providers are happy to sell fairly recent movies to airlines to offer on the on-demand seat video systems. But while airlines can save lots of money, including fuel costs, by stripping out the cables and seat screens and installing far-simpler Wi-Fi servers, the studios are wary of streaming content onto personal devices on open networks.

As the industry struggles to sort those things out, I nevertheless sensed a degree of relief at the show’s fancy awards ceremony. Here, at least, was something familiar and tangible — an awards show, the annual Passenger Choice Awards, based on global passenger surveys done with help from the Nielsen Company.

The winners for “best overall passenger experience,” including cabin amenities and in-flight entertainment, were Emirates Airlines and Virgin America. Regional winners were South African Airways (Africa), Virgin America (Americas), SriLankan Airlines (Asia and Australasia), Virgin Atlantic (Europe) and Emirates (Middle East). Norwegian was cited for best in-flight connectivity. But aside from Virgin America and Southwest, which won a nod for best in-flight publication, airlines in the United States were conspicuously missing from the in-flight experience awards.

Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines, for one, continues to bet big on high-end embedded in-flight entertainment.

Singapore, a premium carrier, said it is spending $400 million on an advanced in-flight entertainment and communications system from Panasonic that will be installed on 40 new long-haul planes it has ordered. That’s an improvement on the carrier’s current system, which offers on-demand more than 140 movies and 200 television shows.

On long-haul global flights, the case for embedded entertainment systems is far clearer than on shorter flights, however. That’s where airlines and suppliers are scratching their heads.

For providers of in-flight entertainment of all kinds, the proliferation of smartphones and tablets is clearly confounding. Passengers carrying tablets, smartphones and laptops already have “a very wide range of content available right up to the point where they board the aircraft,” said Robert Smith, the director for market intelligence for IMDC, a consulting firm in Britain.

Traditional and perhaps hidebound in-flight content providers like movie studios aside, “there are some extremely large organizations fighting very hard to be the consumer’s first choice” in providing content, including content that is brought onto the plane by the passenger, he said.

That got me thinking on Sunday, as I was returning home on Southwest Airlines. On that trip, I was deeply engrossed in the in-flight entertainment — a tragic and heartbreaking tale of a spirited young princess who is dragged across a continent to a life of luxury, duty and ultimate horror, as she evolves into a doomed queen caught in the vice of violent history and goes to her savage death with dignity and valor.

Not a dry eye in the house on that drama, I’d say. Incidentally, I brought that particular in-flight entertainment onto the plane with me, in the low-tech form of Antonia Fraser’s brilliant 2001 biography, “Marie Antoinette: The Journey.” The book was far, far better than any movie I might have watched on a screen.