In 2007, SITA developed the results of a traveler survey performed a couple years earlier and drew some interesting results about the forthcoming digital traveler. At the very least, their efforts were interesting, and in some circles, a little off target. Don’t get us wrong, this is not a critique of their work…we have other fish to fry here. No, in many ways, today’s digital nomad has great ground-based wireless services (albeit expensive) but the airborne side is developing slowly but surely. Here is the rub – it aint happening quick enough and at low enough price point to please many. While the study refers pretty much to ground based services, the issue here is in the air.
To the traveler, besides the taxi ride to the airport and time in a hotel room, the digital action is at the airport and on the plane. At the airport, the “surfing” time is confined to waiting…which may, or may not, be a minor window in trip time. And speaking of airport Wi-Fi, as far as we know, there are around 100 or so airports in the US and another 100 or so worldwide that offer the service free. Please note, various websites covering free Wi-Fi differ. We should also mention that during last Christmas, Google provided some 54 US airports with free connectivity. Although we don’t know the uptake, the IFExpress crowd loved it. Unfortunately, in the air is another story. As we all know, sometimes the airborne portion of a trip nears or exceeds 12 hours, but let us not get ahead of ourselves.
Back to digital demand. This past June, Cisco laid out their view of the future digital data market: Global IP traffic up 4.3 times by 2014 to 63.exabytes per month. Our interest is on the mobile portion of that market. By the way, one exabyte is a billion gigabytes. The graphic accompanying this article puts the mobile IP estimate somewhere in the vicinity of .25 EB/ mo. today. The airborne side market is barely .04% of that estimate, if our math is correct (probably not, but the real estimate is south of that number). 
The point here is that the growth of mobile IP data is 10 fold what the rest of the global IP market will be in 2014 and this surely will put pressure on airlines to feed the flying digital denizens. Next assumption – to feed this monster, the price per bit must drop. With airlines nickel-and-dimeing fliers, inflight connectivity now has more competition for your extra bucks, florins, pesos, or whatever. While the user base might be growing it is just too expensive, which might somewhat explain low take-up rates (less that 5% by our estimates). No one blames AirCell on this one, costs are costs and we don’t see how they can do it for the price they do, but our guess is that subsidy is needed here in the form of a sugar daddy. Surely, lower price (free) would encourage more users. We don’t know about you, but our tolerance for advert supported Wi-Fi is greater the lower the price point. Airline, search engine, toothpaste…who cares, if we can get our email, they can advertise Preparation H for all we care.
Which brings us to our next point – AirCell IPO. A new CFO has joined AirCell’s executive team with emphasis on his experience in the IPO arena. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make the next assumption – What about a buyer, and would this make sense for GOOGLE or Microsoft’s BING? Right market, right demographic, right digital mindset, bring on a sugar daddy! We also asked some knowledgeable readers to chime in on the subject and they said: “I agree completely. It could even be a two-step process—if there is any potential in an IPO, that could raise the overall value so that a purchase by Google or Bing would come at a higher price.” Another wrote: “Google or Bing. Or Apple. Integrate iPhone, iPod and iPad inflight. Pure content command of 1000 aircraft worth of passengers every day.” Watch this one!
Related links that might interest you:
SITA White Paper Digital Traveler
Aircell Hits 1,000 Aircraft Mark, But Who’s Paying?
Aircell puts Wi-Fi in 1000 jets, Row 44 waits for Southwest | Tnooz
Airport-WiFi-Map || Jaunted
REDUX: Remember our rant about forthcoming iPad competition? Here is a link to what else you might see on your next plane, train, or mass transit ride ride!
Here is a link to an unrelated story, but one really worth reading: ‘How I Saved A 747 From Crashing’
'Future–proofing' the IFE installation means providing an onboard network with sufficient bandwidth that the airline will never have to tear apart their airplane to re-wire to install upgrades. Fiber-to-the-Seat™ provides a fiber optics network running at a gigabit per second – High-definition video is only the beginning – who knows what the hot, killer apps will be 10-20 years from now?!”
