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June 5, 2008

JetBlue Expands Email Options in Test

By Glenn Fleishman

JetBlue’s test plane with onboard Wi-Fi expands to other services’ email offerings: JetBlue is running a trial of in-flight email access on a single plane. Initially, service was limited to Yahoo Mail and BlackBerry mail on Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry phones. Now, the company has expanded to AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Windows Live Mail. Microsoft Exchange access is also being offered, but I’m unclear how the security profile would work there—I’m guessing it’s Exchange Webmail via secured connection. News.com reports that Web surfing is still off limits, but Amazon has a tailored shopping site.

JetBlue won a sliver of air-to-ground spectrum in auctions in 2006 through their LiveTV division. This should allow them to offer low-speed services, including email.

However, a little birdie told me that JetBlue’s test is using the old analog cell network downlinks—that’s right, 1990s technology that provides a trickle of bandwidth. This is what the Tenzing JetDirect service, briefly available before the airline industry collapsed, used for connectivity.

Posted by Glennf at June 5, 2008 9:23 AM

Categories: Air Travel

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