Airbus hangs up on CDMA phones

Airbus' forthcoming OnAir mobile phone service for planes will not support the CDMA network technology used by most US mobile subscribers, vnunet.com has learned. 

OnAir is set for a 2006 release but will offer the GSM service instead, according to an Airbus spokesman.

While GSM is the dominant mobile phone network in Europe and most of Asia, the competing CDMA standard dominates in the US and some Asian countries.

"[GSM] is the most popular standard globally, used by 72 per cent of worldwide mobile phone subscribers," said the spokesman. "There is currently no business case for us to install a CDMA solution."

He added that 93 per cent of the passengers travelling on transatlantic flights use tri-band phones that support both GSM and CDMA networks.

Airbus revealed earlier this week that Siemens will supply it with a nano-GSM/GPRS transmitter to provide wireless network coverage inside the planes. 

Shiv Bakhshi, director of wireless and mobile network infrastructure at research firm IDC, told vnunet.com that Airbus' decision makes a lot of sense given GSM's dominant position.

"But it also speaks to Europe's little tolerance to CDMA," he said.