Taking inventory of airline in-flight VoIP

North American in-flight Internet provider Aircell says all three airlines operating its service have requested the blocking of VoIP.  Another four airlines who have signed up with Aircell haven't announced their VoIP policies yet.

Sitting down with the Boston Globe, AirCell chief executive Jack Blumenstein said American, Delta and Virgin America have asked his company to block VoIP calls. "People don't want to have people talking around them on their cellphones," said Bluemstein. "The nightmare of 20 people on the plane shouting, 'Can you hear me now,' all the way from Boston to LA . . . a lot of people have taken positions saying we don't want that. So we block it."

Interestingly, Blumenstein revealed that AirCell also provides the ability for in-flight communications via VoIP for the cockpit crew and cabin crew for voice communications to an airline's operations center. In the future, the high-speed data service may ultimately provide a path for enhanced cabin services (one presumes this would be a combination of stored/local updating and real-time feeds) such as video, audio, television and more.

For more:
- Boston Globe article

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