American passenger carrier Alaska Airlines has selected mobile telecommunication company T-Mobile US as its preferred wireless provider.
This agreement will see the airline migrating the bulk of its mobility business including data lines and voice lines to T-Mobile.
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In doing so, the airline intends to capitalise on T-Mobile’s 5G capabilities to enhance the customer experience across ticketing, check-in, arrivals, departures and baggage tracking, among others.
Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said: “As two Pacific Northwest-based companies, innovation is in our DNA.
“We are excited to partner with T-Mobile to create a more seamless travel experience using T-Mobile’s next-generation mobile solutions. The sky is the limit on what we will be able to create together for Alaska’s guests and employees.”
T-Mobile’s 5G network will enable the carrier to explore advanced network services including multi-access edge computing (MEC) and private networks to benefit from the huge amounts of data sharing taking place at airports.
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By GlobalDataUsing over-the-wing, under-the-wing and gate applications through the MEC technology would allow carriers to offer ground and flight crew the information required to accelerate aircraft turnaround times, address gate issues and streamline operations.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said: “Alaska is a lot like T-Mobile in some really important ways. Besides both being based in Seattle, Alaska and T-Mobile have a long history of challenging conventional thinking in our industries and pioneering new ways to use technological innovation to put customers first.
“T-Mobile has always fixed customer pain points in the wireless industry and it’s inspiring to help translate that to other industries with like-minded partners like Alaska.”
