Send SMS's from Airlines In-flight Entertainment Screen

Tenzing Communications has made the first successful live demonstration of airborne SMS to mobile phones worldwide. Onboard a demonstration flight of a new Airbus 340-600 aircraft from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, David Trowern, engineering vice president of Tenzing Communications, exchanged SMS messages with several friends and colleagues across the United States and the United Kingdom. Mr. Trowern sent SMS updates on his arrival time to the Los Angeles airport and received back their well wishes, conversing directly with their mobile handsets, while in-flight somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

The new service will integrate with the onboard inflight entertainment system to allow passengers to send and reply to SMS messages via their seat back video screen. Like terrestrial SMS, passengers will simply need to know the recipient's mobile phone number, which could be a problem, as most people do not actually know the phone number of a person, just calling up their name on the screen when sending SMS's. Maybe the airlines will provide a service to pop the SIM card into a PC and print out the phone book before embarking on the flight ? Replies from the ground will be directed right back to the passenger's seat. The service will offer seamless network interoperability with TDMA, CDMA, GSM and iDEN networks.

"A major request of airline passengers is connectivity while in flight, and we look forward to putting our newest innovation into service," said Edward Nicol, chief executive officer of Tenzing Communications. "By adding short message functionality, we are able to provide passengers with a level of connectivity unavailable elsewhere in the airline industry."

Tenzing is working with several airlines and IFE suppliers to implement this service and expects to have the service available for passenger use later this year.'"

Posted to the site on 24th April 2002