This story appears in the
November 2003 issue of
Entrepreneur.
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As airlines look for ways to appeal to business travelers
without giving away the proverbial store, they're turning to
pay-as-you-go options like in-flight e-mail and information
services. In addition to those pricey voice calls from airplane
seat-backs (which run in the $4-per-minute range), Verizon Airfone
now offers JetConnect, a new way to stay in touch with what's
happening on the ground. Here's how it works:
- Once on board, just plug
your laptop modem cord in to the phone jack on the side of the
seat-back Airfone receiver.
- Swipe your credit card, and
log on as you would at your office or hotel. (Thankfully, no
downloads, plug-ins or setting changes are required.) A JetConnect
home page should appear on your Web browser.
- Choose from two options:
JetConnect only ($5.99) offers IM and text messaging, news, stocks,
sports and weather updates, and games. JetConnect with e-mail costs
$15.98, plus additional charges for large downloads. These one-time
fees are good for the duration of the flight-no additional
per-minute fees to worry about.
JetConnect has limitations: Inbound and outbound e-mails and
news page updates are cached on the onboard server, which
communicates with the ground only every 10 to 15 minutes, so
messaging and e-mail functions are not instantaneous. JetConnect
users also cannot surf the Web; they can only access pages stored
on the onboard server. JetConnect will soon be on the domestic
fleets of Continental and United airlines-more than 700 aircraft.
Other major airlines are expected to follow. (Visit www.verizon.com/airfone/jetconnect for details.) In
the meantime, you can use a seat-back Airfone to connect to the
Internet, but expect a slow connection prone to failure.
Christopher McGinnis, travel correspondent for CNN
Headline News, is author of The Unofficial Business
Travelers' Pocket Guide.