The US Federal Communications Commission has granted four companies permanent licences to operate air-to-ground telephone service for commercial airliners in competition with GTE Corp’s Airfone Inc, the only current service provider, which still has only an experimental licence for dhe phones that are now installed in about 1,400 US aircraft. The hottest competition is expected to come from In-Flight Phone Corp, the Oak Brook, Illinois company formed by MCI Communications Inc founder John Goeken after he sold Airfone to GTE and grew dissatisfied with the company’s interference in its running. Goeken is still bound by a non-compete agreement, and has installed his daughter as chief executive and put the controlling shareholding into his wife’s name. In-Flight has invested $8m developing a digital system to compete with the analogue Airfone system. The other three companies licensed are Clairtel Communications Group Ltd Partnership, controlled by McCaw Cellular Communications Inc and General Motors Corp’s Hughes Network Systems Inc, which plans to use analogue technology initially; Mobile Telecommunications Technologies Corp; and American Skycell Corp, both still working up plans.
