The A to Z of wireless

J is for Japan Air

Japan Air is one of many airlines to announce that it will soon offer passengers the ability to use mobile phones during flights. Other long-haul carriers who have promised the services include Emirates and Qantas. By 2008, it is expected that more than half of airlines will be offering in-flight mobile access.

This has been made possible by routing calls through a picocell on the aircraft to a satellite and then onto ground-based mobile networks. Passengers are charged for using the service, but no more than many standard roaming charges.

The list from A to Z

Click on the links below to find out more on each of the entries in the list.

A is for Antivirus
B is for Bluetooth
C is for The Cloud
D is for dotMobi
E is for Email
F is for FMC
G is for GPS
H is for HSDPA
I is for i-mode
J is for Japan Air
K is for Korea
L is for LBS
M is for M2M
N is for NFC
O is for Operating systems
P is for Pubs
Q is for QoS
R is for Roaming
S is for Satellite
T is for TV
U is for UMTS
V is for Virgin
W is for WiMax
X is for XDA
Y is for Yucca
Z is for Zigbee

Emirates say that initially only a maximum of five people will be able to use the service at a time. It also hopes to limit the annoyance to other passengers by telling passengers to keep their phones on silent and limiting communications to text messages during night flights.

Now many European short-haul operators are also starting to look into the potential of offering such a service, with approval expected from telecoms regulators by the end of 2006. European operators known to be interested include BMI, Air France, Portugal's TAP and Ryanair.

Passengers may soon have more than just mobile phone usage to choose from, with an Airline IT Trends survey finding that 59 per cent of airlines are planning to offer internet and email access by the end of 2008. Tech manufacturer Aeromobile has also said GPRS, Wi-Fi, CDMA and UMTS will all follow soon.

It hasn't all been clear blue skies for developers of wireless in the air - earlier this year Boeing said it will close its high-speed broadband communications service, Connexion by Boeing, which aimed to put satellite-based internet connections on jets.