Live news and sport take wings

December 7, 2000
Web posted at: 4:44 PM HKT (0844 GMT)

By Nic Hopkins
CNN Interactive Writer

Hong Kong (CNN) -- If plastic food, cramped seating and annoying neighbors weren't bad enough, football chants and Mexican waves might soon be regular features of air travel across Asia.

In-flight entertainment is about to become a great deal more lively, thanks to a company that was originally set up to help distressed ships.

London-based Inmarsat Ventures has unveiled a service that lets commercial airlines show live news and sporting events from around the world, even offering to tailor the content to the destination of each individual flight.

And for traveling executives, the service will also allow access to e-mail and the Internet through their own service providers.

Among the first airlines to show interest in the service, which is expected to become available from the middle of next year, are Singapore Airlines and Hong King-based Cathay Pacific.

Inmarsat president and chief executive officer Michael Storey said that at present, the company offered data transmissions of 64 kilobits per second, or slightly faster than most home-based modem connections.

"With compression it can handle video, but we are looking to offer a 500kb/s service from next year that will handle it easily," Storey said.

The service is the result of a joint venture between Inmarsat and Live Inflight Video Entertainment Ltd. Dubbed AIRIA, the service will consist of two channels, one carrying news provided by the BBC and the second sports from Trans World International, which has the broadcast rights to many international sporting events.

While sport and news programming is expected to prove popular, Storey says e-mail will surpass both.

"We don't think video is really what people will use in aircraft, we think the traffic will be dominated by e-mail and Internet users."

Inmarsat was established in 1979 by a consortium of telecommunications companies to serve the maritime industry by developing satellite communications for ship management and distress and safety applications.

It still serves the communications needs of global passenger and freight services, beaming information from nine satellites in geo-stationary orbit 36,000km above the Earth. It plans to upgrade the bandwidth capability of the service to up to two megabits per second by 2004.

By that time it will have launched three more powerful satellites into orbit, covering the busier international travel corridors.

Storey says most major airlines have shown interest in the new service, which will cost little to install since the infrastructure required to carry it already exists in most long-haul passenger aircraft.

"For years we've been providing the communications services from the cockpit to air traffic control, and this service uses exactly the same system," Storey says.

Inmarsat is extremely profitable, booking pre-tax earnings of $315 million from revenues of $417 million last year.

It is planning to sell shares to the public for the first time next year, and to list on both the London Stock Exchange and either the New York Stock Exchange or tech-heavy Nasdaq market.

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