Passengers on certain Aeroflot flights will soon have access to in-flight wireless data service from MegaFon, the companies said Thursday.
One plane will be equipped for the service on June 1, and three other planes will follow on Nov. 1. Aeroflot could not predict which routes will use the outfitted planes, but customers will be able to find out whether their airplane is equipped when ordering tickets on the Aeroflot web site, said Vitaly Savelyev, the airline's chief executive.
Passengers on the four planes will be able to send and receive SMS and MMS messages and to use up to 1 megabit per second of GPRS Internet. For safety reasons, coverage will be provided after the aircraft reaches a cruising altitude of 3,000 meters.
Although prices have not been finalized, one text message will likely cost about 10 rubles (30 cents), while 1 megabyte of data is estimated at 200 rubles, MegaFon chief executive Sergei Soldatenkov said.
MegaFon has invested 150 million rubles ($5.2 million) in the pilot project, which will run through the end of the year. After that, a decision will be made on whether to equip more planes, increase bandwidth or provide voice services. MegaFon predicts that it will recoup its investment within five years.
Aeroflot will need to pay about $1 million every year on extra fuel and other expenditures incurred by having the 80-kilogram cellular stations onboard the planes, Savelyev said.
The market potential for in-flight cellular data usage will be 19 million people by 2013, MegaFon commercial director Larisa Tkachuk said. Subscribers to other networks will have access to MegaFon's roaming coverage, but other service providers will not be able to install their stations on the same plane.
While technology may eventually permit voice services, passenger surveys suggest that many people are opposed to it, Savelyev said. "We will have this option, but we don't know yet how widely it will be used," he said. Current bandwidth through GPRS Edge will be insufficient for voice over Internet, or VoIP, calls, Soldatenkov said.
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