With the announcement a couple weeks ago that Southwest has finally set a date for the testing of their in-flight Internet connectivity it seems that the majority of the US-based carriers have something in the works.  Runway Girl has a couple good posts (Post 1; Post 2) about the various options, but I haven’t been able to find an exhaustive list of all the offerings from all the carriers.  So I decided to put one together.  Here are the airlines, the service and the status of the deployment efforts:

• American Airlines - Aircell’s gogo service currently operational on 767s for NYC-LAX/SFO/MIA routes.
• Alaska Air - Row 44, currently planned for testing on a single plane.
• Jet Blue - LiveTV, but only on one plane and no word on when additional rollout will happen.
• Continental - LiveTV on the entire domestic-focused fleet, starting in January ‘09
• Delta - Aircell’s gogo service, expected on the MD8x planes first and on the entire fleet by mid-2009
• Frontier - Likely LiveTV since they already use the service for television on the planes, but I haven’t seen an official release.
• United - Nothing planned/announced
• US Airways - Nothing planned/announced, though back in February they said they were looking at it.  The fact that they are pulling the entertainment systems to save weight makes me suspect of their ability to actually get it into their planes soon, particularly since they have nothing specific announced, but they supposedly are looking at it.
• Southwest - Row 44, currently planned for testing in Q4 ‘08
• Virgin America - Aircell’s gogo service coming soon and will be fleet-wide.

The Aircell and LiveTV services are both terrestrial, which Row 44 is a satellite-based solution.  Row 44 and Aircell’s gogo are both supposed to be “full” Internet service while LiveTV is very up front about the fact that they are providing access to a very limited subset of the internet, and they’ve increased the content available recently.

Hopefully this helps (and I didn’t mess up the details too much).  If I did, I’m sure you’ll let me know.

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Sprint lovers rejoice! Even though the beloved Sprint SERO plan has been put to rest, Sprint still have an employee referral offer. Their new plan is one of their “Simply Everything” packages and costs $59.99 per month. The plan starts at $59.99 and comes with 500 minutes as well as unlimited access to all the other Sprint services (including Blackberry Internet Service!).

The one downside to the plan is was that you had to actually know someone who works for Sprint. But that issue has been taken care of, courtesy of their Senior VP of strategy, Russ McGuire. Mr. McGuire posted his own personal details so anyone can now take advantage of this plan. Kudos to him for recognizing this opportunity!

My e-mail address (you’ll need it) is russ.s.mcguire@sprint.com and the 3 digits you’ll need are 383.

The Sprint signup page for the deal itself can be found here.

Source: McGuire’s Law (blog)

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Slydial is a new service that connects you directly with someone’s mobile voicemail box, without actually having to talk to that person! If you need to leave someone a message, or just need a way to weasel out of a meeting, this might be the product you have been waiting for.

The service is simple, you dial 267-759-3425, enter the number you want to call and after listening to a short commercial, you reach the voicemail box of the number you entered.

It didn’t work as flawlessly as I had expected as the 2 phones I tried did ring once, but it was just one short ring. This does mean that the called party will have your caller ID, so if you really need to be sly, block your caller ID.

Source: Slydial.com

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Here is a little gadget that can make life with a GSM phone much easier. It isn’t the first of it’s kind, but it is the cheapest option out there.

It sits between the card reader in your phone and your sim card, and tricks the phone into accepting any sim card you want.

I’m not 100% sure how the technology works, but it looks like it fools the phone into thinking the SIM card is the one it was made to accept.

There are a few caveats:

1) There is a tiny chip soldered onto the flexible circuit board, and in some mobile phones this means you can’t fit the sim card in the reader. The solution is pretty easy; cut a small hole in your sim card!

To make the hole, I use a $1.50 single hole puncher from Staples. Naturally you’ll be punching the hole in the side of the sim without the electronics or gold plated contacts.

2) It doesn’t work with every combination of phone/sim card - I’ve tested it in quite a few phones, and I’d say that 9 out of 10 times it works just fine. It’ll make a T-mobile sim work in an iPhone, and an AT&T sim work in a T-mobile Blackberry. A long list of phones that have been tested with this product can be found here.

Surprisingly I found that some really cheap prepaid phones seem to block this trick, apparently the operator is scared of people using their $15 phones when they shouldn’t.

3) Sometimes you need to reset your phone - I’ve noticed that some phones work fine for a day or two, then they’ll suddenly claim the incorrect sim is inserted. In those cases I’ve simply turned the phone off and on again.

4) It doesn’t actually unlock the phone - as nice as this solution is, it isn’t a permanent way to unlock your phone. You’ll always need to keep the device between your sim and the phone.

All in all a great little product, under $10 and handy to carry abroad if you need an easy way to use your own sim in a foreign phone (or the other way around). It even comes in a convenient carrying case.

You can find the “i-smartphone 2008″ at Dealextreme.com. It costs $8.77 and ships for free. Please do be patient with Dealextreme as they ship their products from Hong Kong and delivery can often take up to 3 weeks. If you need it really fast, you can select EMS Express for just $20.

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Rogers (Canada’s only GSM provider) has caved to the pressure from customers and Apple. For a limited time (July 11th till August 31st) they’ll be offering a pretty generous 6Gb data plan for the iPhone for just $30. That’s actually better than the AT&T plan, which has an unofficial cap at 5Gb. Of course, as with most Candian plans, customers will still need to sign a 3 year agreement.

Customers attending launch day events at these Rogers Plus stores will be treated to a free early bird breakfast and have a chance to win Rogers Wireless prizes. Effective July 11, and as a limited time promotional offer for customers who activate by August 31 on a three year contract, a data-only offering of 6GB of data for $30 per month is being made available that can be added to any in-market voice plan. For example, with 6GB of data, iPhone 3G users can visit 35,952 web pages, or send and receive 157,286 emails, or watch 6,292 minutes of YouTube videos each and every month.(xx) New Canadian iPhone 3G customers will also have the choice to select from Rogers Wireless’ existing voice and smartphone data plans and/or additional features to best suit their needs, or from Rogers Wireless’ value bundled plans specifically for iPhone 3G.

Color me impressed, I just hope they’ll offer a similar plan for Blackberry users when they introduce the Bold, because they have been asking for better data plans for years, and it seems pretty unfair to ignore them too. I guess it just shows what the power of the Internet (and bad PR) can be.

Source: Gizmodo (Thanks DallasBill)

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By now you are probably tired of me warning people about the risk of international roaming data on their mobile phone.

But there isn’t a day that goes by without me reading about some poor traveler who went to Farawayistan, turned on his mobile phone and was amazed he was able to get "a signal".

But here is why I’m warning you AGAIN: with the new 3G iPhone (in fact, ANY 3G phone), you won’t only get 5x the speed, you’ll also be on your way to a massive bill 5x faster.

Example: AT&T charge an insane 1.95 cents per kilobyte ($19.50 per Megabyte) when abroad. Since your new shiny 3G iPhone can download on almost any foreign 3G HSDPA network, you’ll reach speeds well over 1 Megabyte per minute, which means you could be charged almost $20 per minute if you have a lot to download. I’m pretty sure most brothels would be jealous of rates like that.

(Image showing 253Mb of data transfer in the UK using an iPhone) 

Once you land, and figure you’ll just turn your phone on "for a few minutes" to see if you missed any calls, or whether you have voicemail, your phone could be downloading all 450 email messages in your inbox. By the time you reach the immigration desk you’ll have run up a $390 roaming bill (20MB of transfers isn’t that much nowadays).

So: turn OFF international data roaming BEFORE you leave the country.

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Beta testing company Centercode has a callout for 100’s of testers willing to help them with a new product:

Centercode has a large beta test which we need several hundred participants in the New York City Metro area. If you know of anyone who might be interested in participating in a very cool beta test, we want them.

This exciting new hardware product will provide portable Internet functionality. Surf the web, read the news, check your stocks or watch videos on YouTube while you walk the streets of NYC.  We have hundreds of open spots!

Centercode Open signup link.

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According to "a reliable source", the Sprint SERO (Sprint Employee Referral Offer) plan is going to cease being offered on July 10th.

The SERO plan was in my opinion the one thing that made Sprint interesting. $30 a month got you 500 minutes, unlimited data, unlimited messaging and unlimited nights/weekends. Thousands of people have joined or returned to Sprint thanks to this plan.

Sprint is replacing SERO with a much less interesting $10 discount on their cheapest "simply everything" plan. I’m not entirely sure that Sprint understands the consequences of their actions. Thankfully they’ll allow existing customers to stay grandfathered in on SERO, but any changes to the plan like picking a new phone, will require you to upgrade to the new plan ($59.99).

This is horribly poor timing by Sprint, especially with the new 3G iPhone arriving in the same week. One would think that an operator losing this many customers would do everything they can to keep people loyal to them.

Source: Sprint users forum

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If you plan to bring your technology abroad this summer, be sure to check these 5 quick tips:

1) The voltage

Before you even think of plugging your electronic device into a foreign outlet, you need to check the voltage in that country, and the voltage compatibility on your device. I’ve posted about this in the past so I suggest reading that and checking your power supplies.

2) Mobile phone roaming enabled and possible at your destination?

Most mobile operators do not turn international roaming on by default. If I had a nickel for every time someone emailed me complaining that their mobile phone "could not get a signal" at their destination, I’d have a couple of bucks.

There are 2 things to check before taking your phone with you:

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Greetings foreign visitors! I’m sure that the pull of cheap Dollars is making you excited to come and visit the US.

But what if you plan to come to the States and make a lot of mobile phone calls? Prepaid phone service is nowhere near as advanced as it is in the rest of the world, but if you know where to look, you can still find some decent options.

Here are 11 simple things you need to know about our prepaid services, where to find them, and how to save some money.

1) Finding a prepaid sim

The prepaid “sim pack” is impossible to find in the US. No retail stores carry a “sim only” prepaid kit. If you are just looking for a cheap sim card for your existing (unlocked) phone, then you’ll need either purchase a kit with a phone, or visit one of the AT&T or T-mobile branded corporate stores. Even the phone kiosk in the local shopping mall won’t always be able to activate one of their sim cards for prepaid service.

Don’t bother looking around the airport for a prepaid kit. Some common stores that carry prepaid phones are:

• Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid and most other chain pharmacies (drug stores)
• Bestbuy, Circuit City, Radio Shack and Fry’s (all large electronics stores)
• Walmart, Target, K-Mart (department stores)
• T-mobile and AT&T corporate owned stores
• 7-Eleven and some other convenience stores

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