AT&T Launching In-Flight Wi-Fi Service in Late 2015

Phone company AT&T announced today that it’s officially in-progress on a new project to bring in-flight wi-fi access to more flights in the air travel industry. Its infrastructure will be based on the 4G LTE network the company has built over the past several years.

As a result of this formal announcement, Gogo, a key provider of in-flight wi-fi on airlines, saw its stock decrease significantly. In this case, significantly equates to tanking, as the overall drop was as severe as 24% after a few hours.

AT&T claims that its new, unnamed service will be available starting in late 2015, and a partnership with “aerospace industry leader” Honeywell will make it all possible.

“Everyone wants access to high-speed, reliable mobile Internet wherever they are, including at 35,000 feet,” said John Stankey, Chief Strategy Officer at AT&T in a press release issued today.

“We are building on AT&T’s significant strengths to develop in-flight connectivity technology unlike any other that exists today, based on 4G LTE standards. We believe this will enable airlines and passengers to benefit from reliable high speeds and a better experience. We expect this service to transform connectivity in the aviation industry – we are truly mobilizing the sky.”

The network will be air-to-ground in nature, following LTE conventions and standards. It will also be “high speed” in nature, which AT&T says will allow you to browse the web, check email, and use social networks.

These are all manageable activities on current in-flight wi-fi networks, which are notably slower than grounded, local gigabit networks… so it makes sense that AT&T would promise them at the very least. Notice that they don’t promise to revolutionize how robust the experience is – which is to say, you’ll still have too-limited bandwidth to enjoy streaming videos, music, etc… at least for now.

Let’s see what they do with it next year.