Aircell has announced that it will begin using the GSM 4th Generation data network upgrade LTE (long Term Evolution) to beef up its in flight Internet service. Aircell currently uses EVDO REV. A for its connection an provides a 12 mbps connection to the aircraft. Aircell expects advances in existing techology will time them over until LTE is real world ready providing a 22.7 Mbps connection by 2009. The LTE upgrade is expected in 2011 and an estimated link of 300 Mbps.
Read the full release at Aircell
i'm pretty sure all these numbers are just hype. The current EVDO connection is 3.1 Mbps physical layer, so about 2.2mbits at the TCP/IP layer. Remember this is shared between all the planes in a very big piece of sky, too. AIRCELL likes to PRETEND that their compression will speed up the link to 12 Mbps effective. If you believe that i have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you... Plus they aren't getting any more bandwidth in the future because - guess what- the faster speeds use more bandwidth than they have licensed, and there isn't going to be any more. Finally the 300 Mbps is just a joke. People ought to be more skeptical about these claims.
While the current data rates may very well be hype. I don't see the hype being any worse than that being presented by the manufacturers of WIFI equipment. These are obviously best case senarios if at all possible.
I'll take any kind of connectivity I can get while flying! Slow, fast, whatever.