Live TV in SA planes happening soon

G-Connect launched their long awaited in-flight Wi-Fi service in early May 2012, and according to WirelessG CEO Carel van der Merwe the take-up is very promising.

“We had 2 G-Connect In-flight Wi-Fi Branded Mango planes operational for the month of June. We had on average more than a 1,000 unique traveller sign-ups per plane for the month. This is very promising,” said van der Merwe.

There are currently 4 operational panes delivering Internet access to travellers, while the installation of the fifth plane was recently finished. “The G-Connect service is expected to be available as a Beta service on the fifth plane during next week,” said van der Merwe.

Van der Merwe added that they are on track to have the full Mango fleet installed by the end of the year.

“Mango is introducing a sixth plane to the market which will also be installed soon. We expect to finish the installation and Beta phase with the entire fleet before end October 2012. All Mango passengers will definitely have a well connected G-Connected in-flight Wi-Fi Christmas journey,” said van der Merwe.

“Although the G-Connect In-flight Wi-Fi service is still in Beta, it is very stable with less than 5% outage in total. In most cases, the downtime typically lasted for only a few seconds, which does not really influence a customer’s experience. This is more stable than most wireless networks on the ground.”

Van der Merwe said that they will now start to focus on the second phase of the project, which will include content such as live TV in the connected planes.

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