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Bytes in the Air

As I post this, I am thousands of feet above San Francisco, on a Virgin airplane, surrounded by press and partygoers celebrating Virgin's imminent roll-out of wireless internet to their passengers. The in-flight service is provided by a carrier called Aircell, which spectrum geeks may recall won an exclusive ten-year contract from the FCC in 2006 to provide air-to-ground broadband at 3MHz. Onboard, a standard 802.11 wi-fi network works with all standard devices.