Row 44 is a Westlake Village, California-based company providing in-flight broadband connectivity for the passengers, cockpit and crew of commercial aircraft. The company’s service includes internet access, live television and other entertainment content, and cell phone services (where permitted) for commercial air passengers, as well as airline operations services for cockpit and crew.

In addition to its Westlake Village, California, corporate headquarters, Row 44 has engineering and development facilities in Romeoville, Illinois, and an international business development office in London, United Kingdom.

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Corporate history

Row 44 was founded in 2004 by British-born entrepreneur John Guidon and Southern California technology entrepreneur Gregg Fialcowitz, to compete with the in-flight Wi-Fi services of now defunct Connexion by Boeing.

The company got its start when co-founder Gregg Fialcowitz was building CopperVision, a company attempting to provide satellite television services to the multiple-dwelling-unit market. Working with News Corp and DirecTV, Gregg established a relationship with Hughes Network Systems (HNS), and realized that the same satellite technology could provide in-flight data services to airliners. Gregg approached friend and colleague John Guidon, a technology entrepreneur and pilot who had built the chip-making firm ComCore, which he sold to National Semiconductor for $150 million. John’s background also included engineering stints at defense contractors Marconi Space and Defense Systems and Litton, where he designed Inertial Navigation Unit elements still used in aircraft today. Gregg and John worked with executives at Hughes, who were receptive to leveraging their global infrastructure to provide airline Wi-Fi, and secured exclusive North American rights for Row 44 for this application, as well as the rights to leverage Hughes’s satellite infrastructure around the world.

The company’s name is derived from Guidon’s experience as a teenager sitting in row 44 on a DC-10 airplane when traveling the US

Satellite-based uplink

In contrast to other providers that use ground-based antennas to link the aircraft to their networks, Row 44 leases capacity from the existing HughesNet satellite Internet access system enabling them to provide worldwide services even over water.

According to Row 44, their equipment, including an antenna atop the aircraft, can be installed on an airplane in just two aircraft overnights and weighs merely 150lb compared to Connexion by Boeing’s 800lb hardware.

The System

Row 44’s in-flight broadband solution consists of the following components:

- Ku-band antenna system — mounted atop the aircraft fuselage and encased within a fiberglass, RF-transparent radome.

- Four Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) — mounted inside the aircraft, above the cabin headliner. These LRUs include an Antenna Control Unit (ACU), Modem Data Unit (MDU), Server Management Unit (SMU, and High Power Transceiver (HPT).

- Cabin Wireless LAN Units — mounted throughout the aircraft cabin as needed to provide consistent Wi-Fi signal for passenger and crew use.

Row 44’s top-mounted Ku-band antennas communicate with geostationary satellites within the Hughes Network Systems (HNS) global satellite infrastructure, allowing Row 44 to offer uninterrupted in-flight Wi-Fi service over water and on airlines’ routes virtually anywhere in the world.

Testing phase

Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines will be testing Row 44’s services onboard their aircraft on North American routes from August 2008 on.

Alaska Airlines has stated that, upon successful outcome of the flight trials with Row 44’s Wi-Fi service, the airline plans to begin equipping its entire fleet with the system.

Southwest Airlines has also stated that it plans a fleetwide deployment of the Row 44 Wi-Fi solution after a successful completion of the airline’s test flights, which will take place on four Southwest planes.

In addition to the company’s first commercial airline customers, Row 44 has also been testing its in-flight Wi-Fi system aboard its own test plane, a 1950s Grumman Albatross sea plane. The company purchased and restored the aircraft in mid-2008. The Albatross, originally designed for the US Air Force for search-and-rescue operations (and later used by the Coast Guard for the same purpose), has the same curvature atop its fuselage as a Boeing 737 — making it an ideal aircraft to test Row 44’s satellite antenna and radome.

Row 44 outfitted The Albatross with the identical system it will be installing in commercial aircraft. (One difference in hardware, however, is that only a single wireless LAN unit was installed inside the dozen-seater Albatross cabin, whereas commercial aircraft will require two or more such units to provide consistent signal throughout the cabin.)

See also

  • Aircell
  • OnAir
  • Panasonic Avionics
  • Connexion by Boeing
  • Airfone
  • Inmarsat
  • LiveTV

References

  1. ^ Row 44 resurfaces to take aim at broadband market, shephard.co.uk, May 2, 2007
  2. ^ Row 44 Secures $21 Million Equity Investment, reuters.com, May 19, 2008
  3. ^ Row 44 tries to get airline Internet access off ground, Los Angeles Business Journal, October 15, 2007
  4. ^ Row 44 resurfaces to take aim at broadband market, shephard.co.uk, May 2, 2007
  5. ^ Aircell on Virgin by 2008, September 13, 2007
  6. ^ Row 44 tries to get airline Internet access off ground, Los Angeles Business Journal, October 15, 2007
  7. ^ Southwest, American test in-flight Wi-Fi, computerworld.com, January 23, 2008
  8. ^ Airlines Get Ready to Test Fledging Wi-Fi in Flight , pcworld.com, July 16, 2008
  9. ^ Southwest Airlines bringing the internet to the sky via satellite Southwest Airlines press release, January 23, 2008
  10. ^ Delta To Offer Wi-Fi Across Its U.S. Fleet Information Week, August 5, 2008
  11. ^ Airlines going Wi-Fi, cnnmoney.com, August 5, 2008
  12. ^ Alaska Air Tests Satellite Web Access , The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2007
  13. ^ Internet to Aircraft”, Satellite Today, May 1, 2008

External links

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_44”
Categories: Aviation | Travel technology