This press release is copyrighted by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). Its use is granted only to journalists and news media.
Attention, road warriors: no longer will you be cut off from your e-mail and cell phone as the plane climbs to 30,000 feet. Indeed, over the next several years, airlines are looking to deploy a slew of new inflight technologies for business as well as entertainment--not just e-mail, but also real-time Web surfing, on-line shopping, cellular telephone and wireless modem use, and satellite-fed radio and television. It's enough to make even the weariest road warrior forget about the airline food and flight delays--well, almost. No technology is that advanced.
Before all that can happen, a few kinks need ironing out. Among them are setting standards for on-board e-mail and cell phones, assuring the safety and privacy of inflight technologies, and figuring out who will pay for the added cost, which can run to $4 million to outfit a plane with broadband service. As IEEE Spectrum contributing editor Susan Karlin describes in the August issue, the inflight entertainment market is huge and growing: some US $2.4 billion at present, with projected growth to $7.4 billion by 2004.
Contacts: Susan Karlin, [email protected]; Jean Kumagai, 212 419 7551, [email protected].For faxed copies of the article ("Take Off, Plug In, Dial Up" by Contributing Editor Susan Karlin, IEEE Spectrum, August 2001, pp. 52-59) or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
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