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Emirates First Airline To Allow In-Flight Mobiles |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 13 November 2006 |
Duabai-based Airline, Emirates, claims it will be the world's first to let you use your
mobile phone mid-flight with a launch of cell phone services planned to begin rolling out across its entire fleet early next year.
Emirates plans to invest US$27 million to equip its planes with GSM pico-cells
from AeroMobile. The first such system is planned to be available on
board one of its Boeing 777s as early as January next year.
The company still needs to obtain regulatory approvals, but says the AeroMobile system ensures mobile phones operate at their minimum power settings thereby allowing their safe use on the aircraft.
HH
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive,
Emirates Airline and Group said: "As the world leader in innovation for
our customers, we are delighted to offer the choice of mobile phone use
to passengers who would like to make contact with friends, family or
colleagues while flying with us."
The company will enforce guidelines "that recognise and respect the privacy of all our customers" and Emirates cabin staff will and encourage
passengers to switch their phones to silent or vibrate mode when used
in the aircraft. The airline will also show information videos about how to use the service.
Emirates
already has some 6,000 calls a month from its in-seat phones, but the
ability to use your own mobile will make life much easier for regular
travelers trying to stay in touch.
Phones may only be used at cruise
altitude and the cabin crew will have full control over the system,
including the ability to prevent voice calls at certain times such as
during night flights.
There are limits to the system's capacity and
only five or six concurrent calls will be possible, but this is the
same number as for the current in-seat phones says the company.
Charges
will be in line with international roaming rates, says the airline,
which reportedly offers its current in-flight phone service at subsidised
rates in order to increase usage. Currently, this exceeds 13,000
minutes of talk time every month from passengers' in-seat telephones
connected via satellite services.
In the future the company will
also add GPRS data and Internet capability to the system as soon as the
necessary satellite communications systems are upgraded later in 2007.
Australia's Qantas is running an evaluation of the AeroMobile system for its fleet and plans to introduce the service early in 2007.
Qantas Group General Manager of Customer Product and Services, Lesley Grant,
said in August the airline would evaluate the technology over a three-month period on a
Boeing 767 aircraft operating on Australian domestic routes.
Telstra, Panasonic Avionics Corporation and AeroMobile
are all contributing to the trial, said Qantas.
The Civil Aviation Safety
Authority (CASA), Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and other
agencies are all being involved to ensure the system operates in accordance with Australian regulatory
and legal requirements.
Even low-cost airlines are getting into the act. The United Kingdom's RyanAir and announced it too will launch in-flight mobie phones services next year.
AeroMobile is a joint venture between ARINC and Telenor have developed an exciting new service known as AeroMobile – a safe, cost effective way to allow passengers
use their mobile phones and PDA’s whilst in flight. The solution
initially addresses use of GSM phones but will be expanded to support
other technologies such as GPRS mobile data (for BlackBerries etc),
wi-fi, CDMA and 3G/UMTS.
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