A NEW Europe wide telephone system, with most callers ringing from 35,000 feet and travelling at speeds of over 500 mph, has been established by a company based in Shannon.
JetPhone, the first European company to provide a ground based telephone service for short and medium haul flights, will have its telephones installed in around 250 aircraft by the end of 1997.
It has contracts with Scandinavian Air Lines (SAS), Air France and British Airways and has already installed its system in well over 100 of their aircraft.
There is a total population in Europe of in excess of 1,000 suitable scheduled services aircraft.
"We will have a successful project if we get 800 aircraft," said JetPhone chief executive Mr Conor Hayes. "We will have a super successful project if we get over 1,000."
JetPhone is a British Telecom/ France Telecom joint venture established in 1995 to develop and service a European Terrestrial Flight Telecommunication System (TFTS). It is based in the Shannon Free Zone, with sub offices in London and Paris.
Thirty two dedicated ground stations have been established around Europe by national telecommunications companies, covering most of Western Europe from Ireland to Poland, and Scandinavia to Greece.
It is hoped to have 40 such stations established by the end of 1997, and to eventually provide a "corridor of coverage" to Moscow.
Using cellular radio technology and air to ground digital radio link, calls from aircraft are linked to the aground stations and the local telephone network, thereby allowing calls to be made to anywhere in the world.
Calls made on the aircraft are recorded in the ground stations and the information is gathered each night by the JetPhone base at Shannon. Computers calculate the cost of each call made, then bill the caller's credit card account. The company's system also estimates the percentage of the charge which should go to the airline, to the telecom company or companies involved in the making of the call, and to JetPhone itself.
All of the transactions are calculated and settled electronically.
It costs between £200,000 and £250,000 to fit out an aircraft. JetPhone has already invested £30 million to £40 million in developing its system and fitting out aircraft. At current costs an estimated £120 million more would be needed to fit out the targeted 800 aircraft.
However the company expects to become profitable in a year or two. Turnover is "small and growing."
"The lead in time between beginning negotiations with an airline and the first person making a call is very long," said Mr Hayes. "However once its up and running with an airline the profits should come into play fairly quickly."
Callers on British Airways and SAS flights are charged £3.30 per minute, while on Air France they are charged 15 francs (£1.70) to access, and 25 francs (£2.80) per minute for the call.
Calls are charged at the same price no matter where in the world the call is made to. The company is considering introducing pricing changes which it believe might increase the number of calls made or the average length of time which each call lasts.
This might involve making the charge per 30 seconds, or having different rates for calls inside and outside Europe,
At present the average duration of a call is 2.5 minutes. The number of calls made per aircraft per day varies from an average of 6 to 24, depending on the day of the week.
The company believes that the introduction of the system on a number of major airlines will lead to it eventually becoming a service which passengers will expect to find and that this in turn will make it easier to land contracts with airlines.
Negotiations are ongoing with Aer Lingus about installing the system in the aircraft used on its European routes.
JetPhone employs around 50 people in its Shannon headquarters, and another 10 in London and Paris. The bulk of the staff in Shannon are Irish includes lawyers, aviation experts, telecommunications experts, information technology experts and finance experts.
The Shannon operation includes a customer operations centre where bilingual (French/English) operators work from 1 a.m. to 9 p.m., 365 days a year, dealing with queries from, JetPhone callers, the bulk of them on flights.
The system as currently developed can allow for the sending of faxes from laptops. The sending of e-mail is a likely development in the short term.
The technology for making calls to passengers on aircraft is also available, but the system is unlikely to be developed for some time for a number of reasons including security fears on the part of the aviation authorities, who would be concerned about the possibility that hijackers could be contacted from the ground, and because of a lack of demand.
However JetPhone and the airlines see possibilities for the air to ground telephone link providing the basis for a whole range of inflight entertainment.
Flightlink, a Cable and Wireless subsidiary, is the only company currently in competition with JetPhone and have not yet brought any major contract to fruition.
As it is an air to ground system, using ground stations, TFTS cannot be used for transatlantic flights. (The more expensive system used by US airlines and involving the use of satellites, is needed for such flights.) However a number of Middle Eastern countries have shown an interest in the TFTS system as have a number of South East Asian countries, so the possibility exists that the Shannon based JetPhone system, which is still being expanded in Europe, will eventually "roll out" through the Middle East and on out to Asia.
