A company affiliated with Louisville-based AirCell has won airwaves to provide airline passengers with high-speed Internet access during flights.
AC BidCo LLC, which is linked to AirCell, won a 3-MHz license with a bid of $31.3 million in a Federal Communications Commission auction that concluded Friday after more than three weeks of bidding.
AirCell has said its broadband system would be targeted for commercial deployment in 2007. AirCell did not respond to a request for comments Friday.
The broadband system would allow passengers to use their Wi-Fi devices to access the Internet in the airplane cabin.
AirCell tested its “air-to- ground” system in 2005. Passengers used e-mail and surfed the Internet over the Wi-Fi connection, and one passenger called the speed “DSL-like,” according to AirCell last year.
AirCell also said then that the system would enable U.S. airlines to provide broadband at prices “very similar to what they pay on the ground.”
Denver-based Frontier Airlines spokesman Joe Hodas said the carrier, which has worked with AirCell on in-flight tests in the past, heard from its customers in a survey that Wi-Fi would be a benefit they would be willing to pay for, in the $10 range.
AirCell’s main business is providing communications equipment for private jets, but the spectrum allows AirCell to expand its business to broadband wireless Internet systems for airlines.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-820-1488 or kyamanouchi@ denverpost.com.
