Airfone was an air-ground radiotelephone service developed by MCI founder John D. Goeken , and operated under the names Airfone , GTE Airfone , and Verizon Airfone. Airfone allowed passengers to make telephone calls (later including data modem service) in-flight. Airfone handsets were often located in the middle airliner seatbacks, with two handsets per row for 6-wide coach seating configurations, and more or less depending on the aircraft layout and fare class. First class cabins typically had one handset per seat. Some planes had one or more bulkhead mounted phone stations with cordless handsets that the passengers could use, instead of the multiple wired handsets. Airfone phone calls were usually quite expensive compared to ground-based telephone calls, costing $ 3.99 per call and $ 4.99 per minute in 2006.
26-623: The original Airfone main office and network operations center are located at 2809 Butterfield Rd, Oak Brook, Illinois. The network operations center remains at this location. Bell Mobility used the Airfone technology on Air Canada flights, but branded its service as Skytel (no relation to the Verizon-owned paging firm of the same name). Calls were often discounted or free for customers of airplane-based catalogs like Sky Mall , and Verizon Wireless subscribers could pay $ 10 per month and 10 cents
52-472: A video wall , which typically shows details of highly significant alarms, ongoing incidents and general network performance; a corner of the wall is sometimes used for showing a news or weather TV channel, as this can keep the NOC technicians aware of current events which may affect the network or systems they are responsible for. The back wall of a NOC is sometimes glazed; there may be a room attached to this wall which
78-437: A NOC may also contain many or all of the primary servers and other equipment essential to running the network, although it is not uncommon for a single NOC to monitor and control a number of geographically dispersed sites. A NOC engineer has several duties in order to ensure the smooth running of the network. They deal with things such as DDoS attacks, power outages, network failures, and routing black-holes. There are of course
104-487: A call or a flat 69 cents per call with no monthly fee. Airfone could be used for very slow modem calls, and attempts at data service were made in 2003 and 2004 using an on-board email proxy server. Many of the in-flight calls made by victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were made over Airfone and Air One. Air One was Airfone's primary competitor, operated by AT&T Wireless division Claircom Communications Group, and
130-459: A carried interest, BE Aerospace and Harris formed a joint venture in 1998 called LiveTV; to complete development and commercialization of in-seat satellite TV for commercial aircraft. In June 2006, Live TV won a 1 MHz wide block of frequencies in the 800 MHz air-ground telephone auction conducted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This license will allow air-ground-air communications to take place. An affiliate of Aircell
156-442: A concept demonstration for an ATG system to deliver live radio to commercial aircraft leveraging in-Flight Phone's experimental license. After completing this demonstration, In-Flight Phone contracted Harris to develop a satellite based Live TV system. When in-Flight Phone declared bankruptcy, Harris was a creditor with 50% of the development cost ~4.5 million dollars unpaid. As part of the settlement with In-Flight Phone's creditors for
182-523: A five or six day rotation, working different shifts. LiveTV LiveTV was a major provider of airline in-flight entertainment systems. Originally a joint venture of Harris Corporation and BE Aerospace (BE Aerospace's interest subsequently sold to Thales Group ), it was a wholly owned subsidiary of JetBlue Airways Corporation from its acquisition in 2002 until its sale to Thales in 2014. It had its headquarters in Melbourne, Florida . The company
208-581: A modernized NOC in 1977, located in Bedminster, New Jersey . NOCs are implemented by business organizations , public utilities , universities , and government agencies that oversee complex networking environments that require high availability . NOC personnel are responsible for monitoring one or many networks for certain conditions that may require special attention to avoid degraded service. Organizations may operate more than one NOC, either to manage different networks or to provide geographic redundancy in
234-403: Is used by members of the team responsible for dealing with serious incidents to meet while still able to watch events unfolding within the NOC. Individual desks are generally assigned to a specific network, technology or area. A technician may have several computer monitors on their desk, with the extra monitors used for monitoring the systems or networks covered from that desk. The location housing
260-599: The ViaSat Ka-band satellite service. United was the second airline to announce the rollout of this high speed internet service, since LiveTV's parent company, JetBlue, entered an MOU with ViaSat in September 2010 in order to equip 160 JetBlue aircraft. On March 13, 2014, Reuters reported that the division would be sold to Thales for $ 400 million. The sale was completed in June 2014 for $ 399 million in cash. The LiveTV headquarters
286-543: The United States's first public air-to-ground telephone system with Airfone. The first iteration of Airfone service only permitted air-to-ground calls and frequently dropped calls. A new generation dubbed GenStar was developed jointly by GTE and IEX Corp. in 1992. IEX developed the software, which ran on hardware built by Stratus Computers . GenStar introduced the capacity for airborne nodes to also receive calls, and for connections to be handed over between ground cells as
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#1732845490786312-485: The aircraft moved through them, reducing dropped calls. Handsets also gained screens and RJ11 jacks for fax and modem transmissions. The head of the Airfone division told The New York Times in 2004 that only two to three people use the Airfone service per flight. In May and June 2006, the frequencies ( bandwidth ) over which Airfone operated were sold at auction by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to two new licenseholders, Aircell and LiveTV . Under
338-576: The basic roles, such as remote hands, support, configuration of hardware (such as firewalls and routers, purchased by a client). NOC engineers also have to ensure the core network is stable. This can be done by configuring hardware in a way that makes the network more secure, but still has optimal performance. NOC engineers are also responsible for monitoring activity, such as network usage, temperatures etc. They would also have to install equipment, such as KVMs, rack installation, IP-PDU setup, running cabling. The majority of NOC engineers are also on call and have
364-512: The business on that date. On June 9, 2008, JetBlue announced that it would buy Verizon's Airfone service. The sale of Verizon Airfone to LiveTV (JetBlue) was separate from the sale of the bandwidth that Verizon Airfone used for its operations. In another transaction, LiveTV acquired about 1/3 of the original Airfone bandwidth from the FCC. For a time LiveTV offered, nationwide, mobile telephone style voice service to general aviation aircraft. This service
390-611: The company threatened to move its headquarters to Orlando if it did not receive tax breaks. The City of Melbourne, Brevard County , and the State of Florida gave $ 164,000 in incentives, so the headquarters moved to a new facility in Melbourne. As of that year the Melbourne headquarters has engineering, finance, marketing and sales personnel. In addition, LiveTV had a facility on the grounds of Orlando International Airport in Orlando. As of 2008
416-637: The end of 2006. They cited the declining use of the service, as well as a desire to focus on their key businesses: broadband, wireless and wireline services. Airfone service was installed on 1,000 aircraft belonging to United Airlines and Continental Airlines . US Airways and Delta Air Lines have removed all Airfone handsets from their planes. Verizon will continue to provide service on 3,400 private and government aircraft. On December 28, 2007, Airfone announced it would discontinue service effective December 31, 2008 unless it successfully concludes negotiations with LiveTV , an affiliate of JetBlue , to take over
442-524: The event of one site becoming unavailable. In addition to monitoring internal and external networks of related infrastructure, NOCs can monitor social networks to get a head-start on disruptive events. Computer environments can range in size from one to millions of servers . In telecommunication environments, NOCs are responsible for monitoring power failures, communication line alarms (such as bit errors , framing errors, line coding errors, and circuits down) and other performance issues that may affect
468-438: The facility has a hangar, office space, and a warehouse. Other offices include: Its main product was in aircraft seat-back satellite television service , XM Satellite Radio , and movie programming. The system also offers live flight trackers, for people to see where they are. Depending on the region the airline operates in, different satellite television providers are utilized. The following list of airlines currently have
494-617: The network, and in telecom sector have to track details about the call flow. Satellite network environments process large amounts of voice and video data, in addition to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information. Example organizations that manage this form of NOC includes Artel, a service provider of commercial satellite bandwidth to the United States Department of Defense , located in Herndon, Virginia . NOCs are frequently laid out with several rows of desks, all facing
520-414: The terms of the FCC order that authorized the auction, Verizon received a non-renewable license until 2010, but had two years from the end of the auction to redeploy Airfone to use less bandwidth and share spectrum with one of the license winners. On June 23, 2006, Verizon Communications, Airfone's parent company, announced that they would be discontinuing their Airfone service on all commercial flights by
546-588: The word knock ), also known as a "network management center", is one or more locations from which network monitoring and control, or network management , is exercised over a computer , telecommunication or satellite network. The earliest NOCs started during the 1960s. A Network Control Center was opened in New York by AT&T in 1962 which used status boards to display switch and routing information, in real-time, from AT&T's most important toll switches. AT&T later replaced this Network Control Center with
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#1732845490786572-428: Was available onboard American Airlines , Northwest Airlines , and select Delta Air Lines aircraft. The Air One service was discontinued in 2002. The Airfone was originated by John D. Goeken (who also founded MCI Communications and FTD 's Mercury Network) in the 1970s. Western Union purchased a 50 percent share in Airfone in 1981 and sold to GTE in 1986 for US $ 39 million cash. Delta Air Lines offered
598-589: Was identical to the original Verizon Airfone service. However, because of the change of bandwidth allocation, all of the existing Airfone transceivers in the aircraft were required to be replaced. In April 2013, Aircell acquired LiveTV's Airfone business unit, and announced that in order to support capacity-expansion for the Gogo Biz in-flight Internet service, the Airfone service was permanently decommissioned on December 31, 2013. Network operations center A network operations center ( NOC , pronounced like
624-535: Was in one 52,000 square feet (4,800 m ) building in the Airport Commercial Park along South Babcock Street in Melbourne, Florida. In 2008 the company was headquartered in a total of 22,000 square feet (2,000 m ) of space in a group of five buildings in the Gateway Business Center in Melbourne. During that year the company announced plans to move to the Airport Commercial Park. In 2008
650-439: Was one of the "big four" manufacturers of in-flight entertainment systems, along with Panasonic Avionics Corporation , Thales Group , and Rockwell Collins . Harris corporation developed a concept to provide live television to aircraft via satellite relay and subsequently patented the approach. In 1992 Harris contacted In-Flight Phone to explore the opportunity for commercial aircraft. In-Flight Phone contracted Harris to develop
676-593: Was the winner of the larger 3 MHz wide block of frequencies. Plans for utilizing these frequencies had not been announced by mid-2007. On June 9, 2008, JetBlue announced that it will buy Verizon's Airfone (Formerly: GTE Airfone, Formerly: Airfone) service. Continental Airlines began to add LiveTV to all of its Boeing 737 Next Generation and Boeing 757-300 aircraft beginning in January 2009. In March 2011, LiveTV announced it would install on-board Wi-Fi connectivity for over 200 United Airlines aircraft, using
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