an old familiar feeling

[billvon 3,120]

About 10 years ago I was working at Qualcomm on the MDSS - a medium datarate satellite based data communications system for airplanes. It was based on the Globalstar phone, a phone I had helped design a few years earlier. Things were going really well for a while. We built a bunch of systems, installed them in our company's airplanes, and for a few months I was flying all over the US testing the system and giving demos. I still remember the first time we got the pipe open; I posted a message on here, the traditional "guess where I'm posting from?" message. The week I spent in the south of France doing demos for Airbus were especially memorable.

Then the program got canceled. Turns out cellular had expanded so quickly and in so many areas that satellite phones weren't all that useful to most people. I went on to other things, including a test program that used ground-based towers to provide the same sort of service to aircraft. Much cheaper. Our test aircraft was a D-18, and I remember on one test flight cruising along at 11,000 feet I watched an Otter from Elsinore dumping a few miles away.

And today here I am posting from a Virgin Atlantic flight via the same sort of system. It's just like old times.

[PhreeZone 20]

What type of packet rate are you able to get as a pass though on the ground cellular towers?

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[eeneR 3]

Check out Aircell, they are one of the companies providing this kind of cell air to ground service.

She is not a "Dumb Blonde" - She is a "Light-Haired Detour Off The Information Superhighway."
eeneR
TF#72, FB#4130, Incauto

[Misternatural 0]

A friend of mine who flies a C-5 for the air national guard told us a story Sat. about a crew member who was helping his wife edit a large paper of hers. He was using the tele equipment on the plane which I guess can utilize the internet for personal non classified comm- over non US airspace and relayed the paper to her back and forth during their mission. Not knowing how expensive that was, the crew member was later reprimanded because The bill came to $1500 dollars!!!! My standard response....."Great! My tax dollars at work."

Beware of the collateralizing and monetization of your desires.
D S #3.1415