Delta, Sprint & Others Join Forces To Give Customers Seamless Mobile Services

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Delta, Sprint, Airbus, Airtel and OneWeb have formed the “Seamless Air Alliance” which will look to allow member mobile/cell operators to extend the services they offer into aircraft cabins.

Per the announcement issued by the Seamless Air Alliance:

[T]he Seamless Air Alliance will allow [member mobile operators] to continuously provide their customers – via satellite technology – with the same high-speed, low-latency connectivity from ground to air and back again. It will also significantly reduce costs for everyone involved while creating a smooth, positive user experience.

The alliance says that it is open to other mobile/cell/data operators joining the alliance as it moves forward (GoGo will soon join) and that it is looking to “eliminate the high costs and hurdles” that commonly come with installing the technology to provide such seamless in-air services and that it hopes to enable “simple and integrated billing for customers“.

Reading through the lines of jargon that accompany the press release (why don’t they write these things in plain English?) there are three important customer benefits here:

1. It would seem as if the alliance aims to allow customers to use their regular ground-based mobile services up in the air (hopefully with the exception of voice calling).
2. The alliance will leverage “advances in satellite technology” to offer internet access with low latency and high speeds.
3. This high-speed internet will be available throughout the entire flight even over polar routes (although there will be counties over which the internet will be out of service due to local restrictions).

From a customer point of view the intentions of the new alliance seem good with the alliance saying that it will introduce seamless standards which will require continuous connectivity from gate to gate (apparently there will be no need to wait until the aircraft is at 10,000 feet).

In addition the login process is expected to be basic with a single account able to log in on any member airline anywhere in the world.

Thoughts

Clearly things are still at a very early stage and, while the intentions sound great, it’s impossible to say at the stage just how good or bad the service will be.

I like the sound of the high-speed internet being described but it’s the other aspect of what the alliance is apparently all about that I’m not totally clear on.

I’m going to be interest to see exactly how the “seamless” part of all of this works as, if I’m a Sprint customer (for example), I’m still going to have to login to the new alliance network once I’m onboard…..so how’s that different to what I have to do now?

I guess if my login details mean that my in-flight usage is automatically billed to my Sprint account that is a little more seamless than things are right now for a lot of flyers….but we already have inflight Wi-Fi networks that allow travelers to login with their mobile phone accounts.

So, from my perspective there are still quite a few questions I’d like to see answered before I’m convinced that the new alliance is going to bring something truly useful to the inflight experience but, as all the current alliance members have released the exact same press release, we’ll have to wait a little longer to get those answers.

I would also be a little more excited about this is if the Seamless Air Alliance had more airlines signed up and the likes of T-Mobile, AT&T, Vodafone or Telefonica signed up too…but I guess there’s still time for that to happen.

Any readers have any thoughts on this? How useful do you think it will (can) be?