NINETEEN THOUSAND FEET OVER EASTERN WASHINGTON – By the time this newspaper hits your doorstep, people flying out of Singapore will be watching television over the Boeing Co.’s aerial Internet service.
Singapore International Airlines is the launch customer for the new service, which allows passengers to choose between four TV options streamed over laptop computers linked to Boeing’s Connexion service. The airline launches the service today.
I got a preview of it on Tuesday, during a Connexion demonstration flight from Boeing Field to Walla Walla Regional Airport. It works just like any other streaming video you might download on the Internet – only in my case I was downloading while flying over the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, peering through the smoke of a forest fire toward Mount Hood off to the west.
Online TV, Connexion engineering director Tim Vinopal said, “is one of our first big new features.”
Boeing launched Connexion a little more than a year ago on flights operated by launch customer Lufthansa of Germany. Right now, about 70 planes have the service installed. The total will top 100 before year’s end, Vinopal said.
This is the first of any number of service upgrades Boeing plans for Connexion, spokesman Terrance Scott said.
(Sorry, I got distracted for a second. A nearly full moon is rising over the Blue Mountains to the east. Stunning.)
Anyway, Boeing’s plan is that “about every nine months we’ll introduce new features and functionality,” Scott said.
Singapore International will be the exclusive provider of TV service for the next couple of months, and then other airlines will add the service. Passengers on U.S. flights will be able to chose between CNBC, BBC America and channels EuroNews and EuroSports. On Tuesday, I can report, the last channel was spending a lot of time covering Lance Armstrong’s performance in the Tour de France.
Connexion is far from the first service to offer television programming to airline passengers. JetBlue made its mark offering satellite TV service to each seat. Other low-fare carriers are following suit, including Song, a division of Delta Air Lines, which is using a system developed by Matsushita Aviation Systems, based in Bothell.
What sets Connexion apart, Vinopal said, is that it’s an Internet-based service. You can e-mail friends and family on the ground while catching news headlines.
So what’s next for Connexion? Perhaps an expansion of the television service, Scott said.
“Pay per view, or additional premium things, concerts, things of that nature.”
Or maybe it will be cell phone service.
The technology exists now to provide phone service from the air to the ground. On Tuesday’s demonstration flight, Connexion staffers showed off a private-network phone service that uses the Internet to carry voice messages. The test plane also has a pico cell, which is essentially the same technology ground-based cell companies use to route cell phone calls into their networks.
There are two big hurdles to overcome before Boeing offers cell service in the sky, Vinopal said. One’s a regulatory issue – getting the various agencies around the world to approve cell phone use.
The other is a social issue – how to accommodate people who want to talk on their phones without annoying the bejesus out of the people crammed in next to them in coach.
Already in airports, Vinopal noted, “you hear the most amazing private conversations just a foot away.”
Boeing’s prototype private network service uses noise-canceling headphones and a headset microphone. Vinopal said the headphones eliminate the background noise on the plane so people don’t feel like they have to shout to be heard.
Scott added that Connexion is working with airlines to develop rules for the use of cell phones.
For starters, the technology will only allow seven people to use their phones at once.
Airlines could further limit conversations to, for example, only the first and last hours of a flight. Outside those hours, cell users could send text messages but not make voice calls, Scott suggested.
Those kinds of limits “take a lot of the arguments off the page,” Scott said.
Further down the line, Boeing could start offering Internet-based video games that allow passengers to compete with each other – or people on the ground, Scott said. That’s the beauty of the Internet, he said. “People are into things we haven’t begun to explore yet.”
Oh, sorry. We just flew past Mount Rainier in the sunset. Stunning.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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