European plane maker Airbus SAS has successfully
completed the first in-flight trial of mobile phones and
infrastructure equipment based on GSM technology.
The trial, which took place aboard an Airbus A320 flight-test
plane, culminated a two-year research European Commission-supported
project aimed at testing wireless technology for in-flight mobile
phone and computing services.
Airbus expects to have the technology installed in its aircraft
from 2006 onward. A key objective is to provide service at
affordable prices, the company said.
Substantial demand for in-flight mobile phone service exists,
according to a survey by the Norwegian phone company Telenor
Satellite Services and Arinc conducted at the London Heathrow and
Gatwick airports. Almost half of the 1,200 business and leisure
travellers interviewed said they would like mobile phone access in
flight.
The Airbus tests involved communications to and from several
different types of GSM mobile phones on board to mobile and fixed
telephones on the ground, and to another mobile phone onboard,
Airbus said.
Signals from the mobile phones were received by an onboard base
station, then transferred to an onboard server that forwarded them
through the Globalstar Telecommunications satellite communications
network to the ground and finally routed to ground-based phone
networks.
Also tested were several wireless computing services, such as 3G
based on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiplex Access)
technology, WLan (wireless Lan) using the Wi-Fi standard 802.11 and
short-range Bluetooth.
Tested services included GSM telephony, web browsing, e-mail and
connectivity to a VPN (virtual private network). An onboard
intranet was demonstrated as were PDAs for crew use.
The Wireless Cabin project is being led by the German Aerospace
Center (DLR). Partners include Inmarsat, Siemens and Ericsson.
John Blau writes for IDG News Service