Aircell taking 4G LTE Route

Aircell will be base its second generation of its in-flight Wi-Fi service on the 4G Long Term Evolution data network. This new service will go live later this year, relying on CDMA EVDO Rev A for in-flight data transfer, maxing out at 12 Mbps. Aircell has set a benchmark to surpass the 20Mbps figure by the end of next year based on their projections using advances in current technology. When the 4G LTE network is incorporated fully in 2011, Aircell hopes that throughput speeds will eventually hit 300 Mbps. It is speculated that such in-flight services will cost around $13 for trips longer than 3 hours, and $10 for anything less than that. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. The only drawback would be the lack of juice on devices as Economy Class seats don’t have their own power outlet.