Airfone

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 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.

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 brands its service 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 can pay $10 per month and 10 cents 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 attacks in 2001 were made over Airfone and Air One.

Airfone's primary competitor was Air One, operated by AT&T Wireless division Claircom Communications Group, and was available onboard American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and select Delta Air Lines aircraft. The Air One service was discontinued in 2002.

...
Wikipedia