On the Record with SCOTT CARSON, PRESIDENT, CONNEXION BY BOEING
"Our mission is to teach the Internet to fly," says
Scott Carson, president of Connexion by Boeing. This spring, Connexion
by Boeing-a pet project of company CEO Phil Condit intended to
provide airline passengers with broadband internet access-made
its first solo flights, in beta tests carried out by Boeing, Lufthansa
and British Airways.
Carson expects these tests to lead to new business. "There's
a number of folks in final negotiations who were awaiting the
outcome of these tests. We're expecting some firm commitments,
and a fleet roll-out next year."
The beta tests were both "a market and a technical evaluation,"
says Carson. The Lufthansa tests focused on technical performance.
"We agreed that we wouldn't charge for the service. The reason
was that we wanted to get as many users as possible, to ascertain
the reliability of the system. We had set challenging thresholds,
although they were lower than those of a mature system, and we
exceeded 90% availability." Lufthansa also loaned laptop
computers to passengers who did not bring them on board.
The British Airways tests produced even better results, thanks
to a later generation of software. Those tests, however, were
more aimed at assessing market interest and at working out how
to price the service.
The hardware used for the beta tests is identified by Boeing as
Block 1. Newer equipment with much greater capacity will be used
for production applications next year. It comprises a Melco antenna,
one or more onboard servers and a distribution system that terminates
in a standard RJ45 broadband/high-speed interface jack at the
seat. In the Lufthansa aircraft there was a jack in every business-
and first-class seat and shared jacks in the economy cabin. The
speed is high enough to allow users to communicate on a virtual
private network (VPN), the standard used by many companies to
protect internal data. The production system is designed to support
100 users simultaneously with the equivalent of a 128 kbs connection.
Connexion by Boeing "became a form of entertainment"
for passengers on the test flights, says Carson. "One traveler,
with her husband in India and kids in the U.S., used the system
to contact them. Passengers felt connected to the outside world,
with a diminished perception of time in the cabin."
British Airways charged passengers $32 per flight for unlimited
access. "Two years ago we thought that we'd bill by the minute,"
says Carson, "but that has a lot of negative connotations
because of the experience with inflight telephones." Passengers
who did sign up were connected for an average of three hours per
flight.
Another key lesson from the tests is that "it has to be a
partnership," says Carson. Connexion by Boeing operates on
a 'cable TV' model. Boeing owns the system, including earth stations,
the antenna and onboard servers, and collects subscriptions from
passengers, while airlines pay a hook-up charge per aircraft and
earn a share of the revenue. It's the airlines, says Carson, who
will build awareness of the service and create new uses for it.
"If there's a delay, they can re-book and print boarding
passes," says Carson. "Imagine the implications if the
entire system has a problem-you're waiting in a line to be rebooked
on the ground, and the Connexion airline passengers are walking
straight through."
Boeing and its partners, Lufthansa Technik and British Airways,
are already working on WiFi wireless links within the aircraft
cabin. However, the company's aim is to proceed cautiously and
it rolls the system out. "The initial light-up will be from
the U.S. West Coast, eastward to Japan. We'll add the Pacific
in 2005 and the Southern Hemisphere in 2006," says Carson.
"The potential is exciting, but you have to focus on getting the first
job done or you'll never get a shot at the rest."
