Connexion by Boeing (CBB) was an in-flight online internet connectivity service from

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

. This service allowed travellers to access a high-speed

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

connection while on board a plane in flight through a wired

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

or a wireless

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer c ...

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

connection. Connexion by Boeing was formed as a separate business unit of The Boeing Company. Major development on the service commenced with a partnership agreement between

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

Delta Air Lines Delta Air Lines, Inc., typically referred to as Delta, is one of the major airlines of the United States and a legacy carrier. One of the world's oldest airlines in operation, Delta is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The airline, along wi ...

, and

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passenge ...

on June 13, 2001. Lufthansa joined the partnership as the International launch customer on June 17, 2001. United, Delta, and American subsequently withdrew from the partnership after the 9/11 terrorist attacks due to the severe drop in airline travel that occurred after the attacks.

Infrastructure

The infrastructure initially used a

phased array In antenna theory, a phased array usually means an electronically scanned array, a computer-controlled array of antennas which creates a beam of radio waves that can be electronically steered to point in different directions without moving t ...

K_u band

antenna Antenna ( antennas or antennae) may refer to: Science and engineering * Antenna (radio), also known as an aerial, a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic (e.g., TV or radio) waves * Antennae Galaxies, the name of two collid ...

manufactured by Boeing and later a reflector antenna developed and manufactured by

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation , established on 15 January 1921, is a Japanese multinational electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of Mitsubishi. The products from MELCO include elevators a ...

on the

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines. ...

, leased

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

transponder In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight trans ...

s, and ground stations. The service provided downlink speeds of up to 20 Mbit/s and uplink speeds up to 2 Mbit/s. Speed varied due to many factors including resource availability, aircraft location, and regulatory restrictions. A license from the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisd ...

(FCC) was first received on December 27, 2001. The

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

subsequently on July 24, 2002 granted Boeing a license for operating over its territory. Other nations followed in granting operating licenses for the service. The service coverage included North America, North Atlantic, Europe, the Middle East, Northern Pacific, Australia, and Asia. While other providers have provided in-flight internet, Connexion by Boeing accomplished it first for flights over water. Ground stations were located in

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...

Canada, Ibaraki Japan,

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

Russia,

Littleton, Colorado Littleton is a home rule municipality city located in Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. Littleton is the county seat of Arapahoe County and is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statis ...

US, and

Leuk Leuk (french: Loèche-Ville) is a municipality in the district of Leuk in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. On 1 January 2013, the former municipality of Erschmatt merged into the municipality of Leuk.Kent, Washington and

Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...

First run

The service was first commercially demonstrated onboard two

Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2022. After introducing the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet times its size, ...

aircraft that were operated by Lufthansa and British Airways in 2003. Service was provided between

Frankfurt Airport Frankfurt Airport (; german: link=no, Flughafen Frankfurt Main , also known as ''Rhein-Main-Flughafen'') is a major international airport located in Frankfurt, the fifth-largest city of Germany and one of the world's leading financial centre ...

- Washington Dulles and

London Heathrow Heathrow Airport (), called ''London Airport'' until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow , is a major international airport in London, England. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others bei ...

- New York JFK. Connexion by Boeing 737

Connexion by Boeing was first launched as a commercial service May 17, 2004 with Lufthansa German Airlines. Later in 2004, ANA,

Japan Airlines , also known as JAL (''Jaru'') or , is an international airline and Japan's flag carrier and largest airline as of 2021 and 2022, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Haneda Airport, ...

, and SAS signed on to the service. Other airlines which launched Connexion by Boeing service in 2005 include

China Airlines China Airlines (CAL; ) is the state-owned flag carrier of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of its two major airlines along with EVA Air. It is headquartered in Taoyuan International Airport and operates over 1,400 flights weekly ( ...

Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines (abbreviation: SIA) is the flag carrier airline of the Republic of Singapore with its Airline hub, hub located at Singapore Changi Airport. The airline is notable for highlighting the Singapore Girl as its central figure in ...

Asiana Airlines Asiana Airlines Inc. ( ) is a South Korean airline headquartered in Seoul.Home
." Asiana Airlines. Retrieved 13 September 2 ...

, and

Korean Air Korean Air Co., Ltd. (), operating as Korean Air (Korean Air Lines before 1984), is the flag carrier of South Korea and its largest airline based on fleet size, international destinations and international flights. The present-day Korean Ai ...

. In the later months of 2005, El-Al Israel Airlines and

Etihad Airlines Etihad Airways ( ar, شَرِكَة ٱلْاِتِّحَاد لِلطَّيْرَان, sharikat al-ittiḥād li-ṭ-ṭayarān) is one of two flag carriers of the United Arab Emirates (the other being Emirates). Its head office is in Khalifa ...

offered the service. In 2005 Connexion by Boeing launched the first in-flight live streaming TV service on an international route on Singapore Airlines, to be expanded to all current airlines in the first quarter of 2006. The service provided four channels of live TV to each aircraft, and available TV programming varied depending on geographical location. Flying out of Germany, the service provided access to live streaming TV for

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sh ...

(Europe), EurosportNews,

BBC World BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media an ...

and

EuroNews Euronews (styled on-air in lowercase as euronews) is a European television news network, headquartered in Lyon, France. The network began broadcasting on 1 January 1993 and covers world news from a European perspective. The majority of Euron ...

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politic ...

was available for flights over North America. Microsoft's

Windows Media Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...

technology was used to generate the

multicast In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused wit ...

TV streams, and users had to have

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as ...

installed to watch them.

Cost

Original prices varied from airline to airline, but were typically $9.95 for one hour of access, $14.95 for less than three hours of access, $19.95 for 3 to 6 hours of access, and $29.95 for unlimited access, however, these prices were determined by the length of the flight rather than actual or desired access time. In comparison, the typical cost at that time of unlimited dial-up internet access for an entire month was $20. Various payment options were allowed: major credit cards, mobile phone, hotspot accounts and even frequent flyer miles. In an effort to get more passengers to use the service, new pricing was announced in January 2006. Boeing offered free service starting on October 2, 2006 as part of its plan to discontinue the service on December 31, 2006.

Features

The service had a live helpdesk chat feature available for customers who have troubles with their connections. Connexion sponsors the business travel blog, InFlightHQ. Connexion by Boeing also extended its internet service to include the maritime market in 2005. The first maritime vessels equipped with Connexion by Boeing service were provisioned in 2006. The business unit also developed a small business jet version of its service in a partnership with

Rockwell Collins Rockwell Collins was a multinational corporation headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, providing avionics and information technology systems and services to government agencies and aircraft manufacturers. It was formed when the Collins Radio C ...

Expansion and dissolution

On January 16, 2006 Boeing also certified other companies such as Korean Air based in South Korea to carry out the Connexion by Boeing modification. On June 26, 2006 it became public that Boeing was exploring selling or shutting down Connexion By Boeing, having failed to attract sufficient customers. The lack of sufficient customers was speculated to be a direct result of the U.S. domestic carriers pulling from agreements with Connexion after 9/11. While the European market thrived on the service, no U.S. domestic carriers were able to justify the approximate $500,000 USD per plane investment and the weight cost of the additional hardware. On August 17, 2006, Boeing announced that it would discontinue its Connexion service, stating that, "the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected." While the consumer service offered by CBB officially ended December 31, 2006 at midnight, Connexion's government contracts for the same service to U.S. Government planes continue under the new name of Boeing Broadband Satcom Network (BBSN) and likely will for the next several years.

References

External links

Connexion by Boeing (discontinued)The Boeing Company
{{Boeing Boeing Wi-Fi providers Defunct Internet service providers