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March 11, 2008

Aircell Names In-Flight Service, Targets Spring

By Glenn Fleishman

Om Malik reports straight from the CEO’s mouth that Aircell’s in-flight broadband service will be called gogo: Their Web site is live, but watch out for the audio in the Flash intro—I thought someone was pounding on my door. CEO Jack Blumenstein told Malik of GigaOm that service will cost $12.95 for cross-country flights and $9.95 for flights of three hours’ duration or less, commensurate with earlier reports. They’re working with aggregators and corporate resellers, as well as lower-rate plans for handhelds like the iPhone, and frequent flyer flat-rate plans. I expect given their costs and the advantages of loyalty, Aircell could charge as little as $100 per month for unlimited use, and all involved would be happy about this. I would expect real price sensitivity above $100 per month.

Malik gets a few previously unknown technical details out of Blumenstein: the system’s capacity is intended to be 250,000 broadband users; it’s currently operational even though not in use; and they plan to increase their current number of 92 antennas to 500 when fully deployed.

Posted by Glennf at March 11, 2008 11:42 AM

Categories: Air Travel

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