Airlines will install more than 4,000 picocell base stations for ...
Airlines will install more than 4,000 picocell base stations for passenger GSM and Wi-Fi services through 2011, Freesky Research said. The cost to supply wireless services on airplanes is falling, it said. “Airborne picocells have dropped in price along…
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with their terrestrial counterparts, in spite of additional R&D investments in aeronautical systems to ensure that their logic and memory chips function properly at cruise altitudes,” the analyst firm said. “This has improved the economics, and reduced the weight requirements, of deploying passenger wireless systems on commercial airliners.” But most airlines won’t install wireless throughout their fleets in the next four years, it said. “For all the reductions in equipment costs, airlines are still reluctant to invest in systems that they cannot amortize over at least five years of flying,” said Freesky’s David Gross.