AeroMobile Innovation Shortlisted For GSMA Global Mobile Award

23rd January, 2009 – AeroMobile, the world’s leading provider of in-flight mobile phone services, has been shortlisted for the coveted GSMA Global Mobile Awards.
 
The company is a finalist in the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough category, in recognition for its industry-leading system that has introduced GSM telephony services on board aircraft. This provides passengers with the ability to make and receive mobile calls and messages whilst in-flight.
 
In March 2008, the world’s first ever authorised in-flight mobile phone call on a commercial flight took place on an Emirates’ aircraft installed with the AeroMobile system. The system has since been installed on 28 of the airline’s aircraft and been used by over 80,000 passengers.
 
AeroMobile is also working with a number of other airlines including Malaysia Airlines, V Australia and Qantas. The company now has over 115 live roaming agreements with key telecoms providers across the globe, covering over 1.2 billion people.
 
Bjorn-Taale Sandberg, Chief Executive Officer of AeroMobile, said: “We are delighted to have been nominated for this prestigious award, particularly as it recognises our innovation in the field of in-flight connectivity.”
 
“Our congratulations go to all the nominees in this year’s Global Mobile Awards,” said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA. “In an uncertain economic climate, mobile communications continue to drive social, economic and technological development, as the calibre of entries this year again illustrates. To have been nominated from such a high quality field of more than 450 companies that entered is a tremendous achievement and we await the announcement of the winners at the next month’s Global Mobile Awards evening in Barcelona with great interest."
 
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Notes to Editors
 
AeroMobile Limited is a UK-based company owned by ARINC Inc and Telenor ASA. It has been pursuing the objective of allowing the safe use of passengers own mobile phones and PDAs since 2003 in response to market demands.
 
Prior to the launch of the Emirates service, mobile phone use in aircraft has only been allowed in limited, short-term trials which did not support voice calls.
 
AeroMobile is the first in-flight mobile technology to be commercially available and first flew in June 2005 on Boeing’s 777-200LR ‘Worldliner’ demonstrator aircraft.  In April 2007, AeroMobile implemented a trial service on domestic flights within Australia. This evaluation project, supporting GSM text messaging and GPRS data services, continued until January 2008 having operated on over 1,000 flights.
 
AeroMobile is teamed with Panasonic Avionics Corporation, the Panasonic’s market-leading in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems provider, to offer the AeroMobile aircraft technology under the eXPhone brand as an integral part of Panasonic’s IFE systems.
 
More information may be found at www.aeromobile.net
 
 
For more information contact:
Steve Double or Charlie Hampton
at Bell Pottinger Business & Brand
Telephone: 020 7861 2449/2431
E-Mail: champton@bell-pottinger.co.uk