A New Era in Airplane Phone Service Forecast : Communications: In two years there are likely to be plane-to-plane hookups, computer-data and fax transmissions.
The next two years will bring important breakthroughs in telephone communication with airplanes, telecommunications companies say.
Not only will passengers be able to place phone calls--as they can now--they’ll be able to receive them, along with facsimile messages and data from portable computers. Some are describing it as “the office in the sky.”
Kirkland, Wash.-based McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. and Germantown, Md.-based Hughes Network Systems are two of the companies that hope to cash in. They have formed a limited partnership to build and operate a nationwide phone and data system for commercial aircraft.
The service, called Clairtel, will use 80 ground stations around the United States to provide radio links with aircraft, McCaw spokesman Bob Ratliffe said.
The venture will be a competitor of the leader in the field, GTE Airfone, a subsidiary of Stamford, Conn.-based GTE. Airphone is the largest operator of airborne pay phones, with 1,300 installed on planes owned by 17 U.S. and Canadian airlines. It was the first to enter the market, on Oct. 15, 1984, under an experimental license from the Federal Communications Commission, spokesman Kevin Petschow said.
The FCC is expected in the coming months to issue licenses to a number of companies--Clairtel and GTE Airphone included--that want to offer airplane phone service on a permanent, nonexperimental basis. The deadline for the license applications was last week.
Each plane equipped with an Airfone system has a radio transmitter-receiver and computer. The computer selects one of 90 GTE ground stations in North America and Hawaii to establish a radio link. Outside the United States, the phones work off Comsat’s satellite service.
It’s not cheap. Calls in the United States or Canada are $2 a minute, plus a $2 setup charge.
So far, they can be placed only from the aircraft to the ground.
Petschow said Airfone will have a second-generation system in operation by 1992, however. That will allow calls from the ground to the aircraft, from one plane to another, and personal computer hookups, fax transmissions and message services. Information hot lines, stock information services and other features may be added, Petschow said.
Ratliffe said Clairtel at first will install a system similar to Airfone’s, but eventually wants one that is part of McCaw’s cellular system. McCaw operates one of the nation’s largest cellular networks. It is in 100 markets across the country.
The ultra-high-frequency radio bands for cellular phones are near those assigned to aircraft phones, so it may be possible to have a cellular phone that can receive both, Ratliffe said.
McCaw is working with other cellular companies to develop a North American network. With a nationwide switching system, it should be possible to dial a cellular phone number in Seattle, for instance, but find that phone wherever it is in the nation, Ratliffe said. That includes on an aircraft.
Clairtel also envisions computer data transmissions, pager messages, faxes and other advanced services.
Ratliffe said there’s the potential to deliver video entertainment to passengers’ seats and for phone-toting passengers to dial up drinks or food from the aircraft galley.
