Posted by Courtney E. HowardMANAMA, Bahrain, 16 Oct. 2011. Gulf Air in Bahrain is offering broadband connectivity at altitudes of 37,000 feet via Sky Hub in-flight technology. Sky Hub is a joint venture of Gulf Air, Panasonic, Deutsche Telekom, and Aeromobile designed to provide air travelers with access to e-mail, text messaging, phone calls, the Web, and live TV, as well as Gulf Air's regular in-flight entertainment offering. One aircraft is equipped with functioning Sky Hub service, to date; Gulf Air officials anticipate fitting a new plane with the equipment every two weeks until the entire fleet is outfitted, over roughly five months. The project reportedly cost several million dollars.
"It puts us in the forefront of competition and we will recoup the investment through funds of passengers using it during flights," says Gulf Air CEO Samer Majali. "This is another important milestone in our customer service journey and we are bringing, for the first time in the world, fully integrated broadband connectivity offering high-speed Internet,voice over Internet (VoIP), streaming videos, and an in-flight live TV satellite stream across continents.”
