E-mail and SMS is now available on Austrian Airlines long-distance flights between Europe and North America.
The service began this week. Each seat on the airline`s long-distance Airbus A330 aircraft will be equipped with an entertainment centre, which will include a satellite telephone. Passengers are able to send text messages to fax numbers, mobile telephones or e-mail addresses. Each message costs $1.95 and is limited to four lines of 25 characters each, for a total of 100 characters.
The software for the message service was provided by a former division of British Telecom called BT Aeronautical and Maritime Division, which was acquired by Stratos Global Corporation of Canada.
The service is only for outgoing messages, as the technology does not yet allow messages to be received.
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