AirCell will be bringing Wifi access to airplanes soon. It will use the same frequency that air phone services used to use and provide transfer speeds the same as what they would be on the ground. Cost for the service is expected to be $10 for the day which depending on what you use it for it could be well worth paying that.

The service at first will not allow VOIP services such as Skype, Vonage V-Phone etc. although it would be possible and might be opened up at a later date. The equipment needed can be installed overnight for $100000 and the costs that airlines run in to for this would be made back with a revenue share with AirCell.

The services are set to be available with in 12 months allowing the whole cabin of the plane to be a flying hotspot for its passengers.

What are your thoughts on this? I am personally ok with this as time wasted travelling can be put to productive use. However, I am not keen on the idea of VOIP being enabled although it might be useful to have cheaper calls in another section of the plane for emergency calls home etc…

Via: WSJ

We finally have found out the release date for the Apple iPhone in the US. It is set to arrive in the US on June 11th and will be priced at $599 with a 2 year service agreement with Cingular/AT&T. Thats a huge contract to take out on a phone and hopefully the service agreement has some good breakdown cover on it. The model at $599 will be the 8GB version.

The iPhone is estimated to cost $280.83 for the 8GB model. For a full comparison of costs take a look at the link below.

Via: TechEBlog

Today at 3GSM, it was reveiled that YouTube will be available for Nokia’s N Series of phones such as the N95 and N93i. As well as being able to stream YouTube videos the software will also allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds and keep everything all in the same place. The video format is AVC and apparantly is available now through your mobile browser.
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According to BusinessWeek, social networking sites such as MySpace are going to be heading towards your mobile phone soon. Vodafone have announced that they will be deploying a service to allow mobile phones to connect to various social networking sites. This will help boost data usage of it’s service from a target audience where the majority of them have a mobile phone and also are keen users of social networking sites. Mobile access tends to struggle a bit because of small screens and costs of accessing services. However, no doubt one day the right balance will be found and mobiles will be useful for a lot more then MP3 and watching news clips on planet 3.

Via: Coolest-Gadgets

The iPhone is due to cost between 500 – 600 dollars for the handset with a contract. However, it might be that the contract could be for free service for 18 months. Cingular/ATT are thinking this one over at the moment. The normal path of selling a phone on contract is to give it away for free with the contract, or charge a low amount for the phone. Apple do not want to go down this route but Cingular/ATT might find an alternative way. This is all just speculation right now but we can hope 🙂

Via: SlashGear

Since the launch of Skype, the service keeps growing and growing. The latest figure I heard was that 200000 people per day were signing up for the service. I am an occasional user of Skype and think it is an incredible service and great for getting free and cheap rate calls to desitinations worldwide. Futiro from Ireland is launching three new Skype phones on to the market. Each phone is USB and has a stylish design to be different from the regular looking phones you get. Unfortunatly no wifi phone is available yet, but no doubt this will be on Futiro’s to do list and launched some time soon. Well, at least we can hope. 🙂

Each phone is to cost from $55.

Via: Fosfor

The other iPhone from Linksys was recently reviewed by the tech lounge. This iPhone is the CIT300 dual mode Skype phone and the review shows that the iPhone is an excellent device. The CIT300 costs around 80 – 90 dollars shipped and can use both SkypeIn and SkypeOut which allows you to call out of the skype network and also receive incomming calls from outside the skype network. The CIT300 phone seems to do what it should according to the review and has all the features that are expected in a VoIP phone. The only problem with the CIT300 is that it does require your PC to be on while using the service. However, if you choose to go for the CIT400 then this can be used over wifi and is totally indipendent.

Via: TheTechLounge