Sunday 18 April 2004

Chissa' se la mia ex-ditta ci lavorera'... ;-) Tenzing's Next-Generation Plan: Low Cost, High Speed. Tenzing's in-flight strategy: keep costs low by piggybacking on existing hardware, satellites; big speed boost coming in two years: Tenzing is a Seattle-based firm that offers its Internet access service to airlines. So far, the company has installed its offering in 900 planes, with contracts for substantially more. Their partners include United, Continential, and US Airways in the U.S., with their service offered via Verizon AirFone, and Cathay Pacific, Iberia, and Emirates, among other international airlines. But Connexion by Boeing has received much more press for its higher-speed offering. Tenzing's 128 Kbps service today allows email by proxy for $15.95 per flight in the US, with surcharges for emails longer than two kilobytes, and no corporate virtual private network (VPN) connections. I and other reporters have been critical of Tenzing's offering because of these limitations which would seem to price consumers out of the market while eliminating most business travelers from accessing their email. Connexion's service features 5 Mpbs download speeds, 1 Mbps upload speeds, full VPN and Internet access, and costs per flight from $10 for pay as you go up to $30 per flight for unlimited use on the longest durations. Connexion has contracts or letters of intent with several airlines, including SAS, ANA, and Lufthansa; Lufthansa should loft the first Wi-Fi-enabled, Connexion-enabled plane later this month. But Tenzing and Connexion have fundamental differences which Tenzing hopes to exploit as new higher-speed satellite service from their satellite data partner becomes available in early 2006. The 864 Kbps service from satellite giant Inmarsat delivered from its three fourth-generation I4 satellites scheduled for launch starting in late 2004 could dramatically change the future of aviation Internet access. This service is called B-GAN for Broadband Global Area Network. The service is in symmetrical 432 Kbps units with Tenzing recommending two bonded channels for 864 Kbps of bandwidth, although four channels and 1.7 Mbps are possible as well. I spoke today with Alex McGowan, VP of sales and marketing at Tenzing, to ask him how Tenzing can compete with a behemoth like Boeing that's offering substantially more bandwidth at comparable prices and has major international airlines' long-haul routes wrapped up. A factor that McGowan emphasized over and over again is that Tenzing's capital cost to airlines is extremely low--in some cases, as low as zero dollars. McGowan said that existing Inmarsat antennas and receivers used in international flights for telephony and cockpit... [Wi-Fi Networking News] 5:46:06 PM    comment [] Interessante 600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD's. John Lowry is forging what might be the future of the DVD and, with it, the way that classic films will be stored, preserved, telecast and watched. By Fred Kaplan. [New York Times: Business] 5:29:51 AM    comment []

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