Not yet sure if it is a good news or not, but Air France has become the first airline in the world to offer an in-flight mobile phone service on international flights.

One Airbus A318 aircraft operating European routes has been fitted with a mini GSM base station to provides 123 passengers the possibility to :

• Send and receive sms and mms messages
• Send and receive emails via all phones with Internet access

During the second half of the trial, passengers will be able to make and receive phone calls, with the service being regulated to maintain passengers’ comfort and well-being.

If passengers kindly turn off ringing traffic data from/to an aircraft should not be a big deal, if not journeys may become quite annoying with uninterrupted flow of incoming messages ringing alert.

Hard to imagine how will be a long haul flight with full mobile phone services (voice and data) "offered" to passengers. 

At the end of the six-month trial, Air France will examine the feedback and comments made by customers to determine whether to launch this service on all its flights.

What is your feeling about the availability of in-flight mobile phone service ? 

For the technical part,
Air France uses Mobile OnAir onboard mobile telephony system, certified by EASA (European Aviation Safety Authority) which does not interfere with the radio-navigation instruments on this Airbus A318 and may only be used at cruising altitude once the new illuminated sign “Switch off your phone” is turned off (recycling the "no smoking" sign ?).  The system is activated at 3,000 metres (10,000 feet).

More about this trial on AirFrance site including a video of the 1st trial flight.

Tags: -50 days-, 2007, access, air, airbus, aircraft, airfrance "air france" gsm "gsm onboard" aircraft aviat, art, availability, Aviation, blog, bt, ces, customer, europe, flight, gsm, HP, ia, im, in-flight, International, internet, internet access, ITU, King, lan, launch, light, list, mobile, mobile phone, nomadcom.net, passengers, phone, phones, safe, safety, services, sms, term, traffic, video, what is, world, wp, www

TGV tests Wi-Fi + satellite link in three TGV trains on its Eastern network. If the experiment proves successful the new service should be generalized, from 2009, to all 52 oars network East.

With combines effort of satellite link and wireless network, in locations, such tunnels and train stations, where the satellite link cannot be established, the wi-fi network takes over to maintain the access to the Web without interruption.

French railways company SNCF previously conducted unsuccessful test using GPRS data network before launching a 2 years research and preparation program to implement this dual solution. Among technical difficulties to overcome are these related to 320 km/h TGV trains speed which causes instability and vibrations. 

The project is done in a partnership with Orange(France Telecom mobile operator), Capgemini, Alstom Transport and Eutelsat.

SNCF will put on board of its TGV a dedicated Web portal providing information about destinations, weather forecast, News, traffic information as well as a real time tracking service. From a technical point of view, TGV trains are fitted with a server where all portal content is loaded prior the journey in order to minimize bandwidth consumption due to its high cost. The tested system has been designed to provide simultaneous web connection for 14 per cent (50 users) of the total capacity of each TGV train (350).

The business plan is not defined yet, but the widespread of the system on TGV Eastern Europe network would represent an investment of 120 millions USD over 4 years. First price estimation given by SNCF Passenger service would be a flat 4-5 USD to access the Web portal during the whole journey and a 4-5 USD per hour to access the Internet.

A very interesting project and definitively a real challenge to maintain permanent web connectivity during a train journey at more than 300 km/h where the 16'000 volt power line running over the train may also create some electro-magnetic interferences and without mentioning all micro interruptions of the satellite link each time the train pass under a bridge or when dense foliage is found within the satellite's line of sight.

Any reader who already had the chance to test the reliability of the service ?

More infos (in French): Journal du Net, CNet France.

Tags: 2007, access, arc, art, blog, bridge, capacity, ces, connection, connectivity, consumption, CTU, design, europe, forecast, ia, im, internet, internet access, King, lan, launch, location, mobile, Mobile Communications, mobility, network, nomadcom.net, power, project, reader, real time, reliability, satellite, search, sncf, telecom, tgv, traffic, train, user, web, wireless, wp, www, XP

Since few days now, iMinR is tracking what's going on this website.

This new service of “measurement of personalized audience” as its creator, Stéphane Guérin, indicates it on his Internet site. The iMinR statistics service makes possible to discover more about visitors of a site in general and, as from now on, this one in particular.

Among statistics provided on the free account version of iMinR we can find :

• Visitors (IP address)
• Visits (per hour, per day,)
• Pages viewed (url, title)Pages vues (url & titre)
• Geographical information (Country, Region, City)
• Web Origin (domain and url)
• Search Engine
• Query String
• Keywords
• Incoming and Outgoing points
• Global duration of the visit
• Time duration per page
• Click stream
• Frequent paths
• Client configuration(browser, operating system, resolution, language, etc..)

About the installation, well it's definitively too easy. You either have to add the provided line of code in your footer's page (also available for secured pages) or, if you are using Wordpress, to install, activate and configure the iMinr plugin and that's it.

No update, no maintenance and training required. iMinR is adapted to sites using AJAX and the 100% javascript invisible (free account users are requested to add iMinR logo on their web site) marker works with any HTML pages (PHP, ASP, etc..).

Real time reports can be personalized according your needs and are accessible either on a web page;  using a javascript function or simply from the iMinR web site.

Today the beta 2 version has been released but so far the interface is exclusively available in French. I have not asked, but the English version should follow no ?

To know more about, check the demonstration page.

Tags: 2007, access, account, Ajax, analysis, arc, art, blog, ces, configuration, dress, engine, find, free, Fun, global, HP, im, iminR, install, internet, King, lan, language, nomadcom.net, pda, plugin, press, real time, release, resolution, sco, search, space, statistics, stats, traffic, train, update, user, web, web mining, website, wordpress, wp, www, XP