Earlier this year AT&T announced that they planned on rolling out inflight internet services which will basically allow passengers to go online, for a fee, of course. This would allow them to compete with the likes of Gogo who already have such systems in place. The bad news is that it looks like AT&T has decided to cancel their plans.
According to RunwayGirl Network who first broke the news, AT&T has since issued a statement on Monday confirming that they will no longer be pursuing entry into the inflight connectivity industry. Instead, the carrier stated that they will be devoting their resources into expanding its international presence.
As you might have heard, AT&T has announced that they will be spending $2.5 billion to acquire Iusacell, a wireless company from Mexico. Apart from this, the carrier is also expected to make “transformative investments”, like their $48.5 billion plan to acquire DirecTV. So if you’re not happy with current inflight internet services and were hoping that AT&T would be a refreshing change, it looks like you’d be out of luck.
While Gogo declined to comment on AT&T’s decision to withdraw, the company’s CEO Michael J. Small did issue a statement which said, “We firmly believe that we are a leader in this space because we specialize in aviation and we’ve built a network to service the global aviation market.”
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