Oman Air has become the first airline in the world to offer both mobile and broadband internet on board its flights, a statement said.

The internet and mobile phone service is now available for passengers travelling onboard Oman Air’s A330 flights, said the statement.

Barring the take off and landing time, passengers can use their mobile phones on Oman Air planes. As soon as the ‘no mobile’ sign is off, the On-Air name will appear on the mobile screen as the network connection is obtained.  The passengers can then receive and make calls, check their voice mail, send and receive text and multimedia messages, and access emails and websites, thus staying in touch during their flight as they would normally do on the ground, it said.

'When using mobile phones on board, the services will be of a roaming nature, as on a foreign network. Users must then dial the full international numbers. Onboard communications will be charged by the home mobile service provider at international roaming rates, as is the case when one uses their mobile phone abroad,' the airline said.

With the Wi-Fi network access, logging onto the internet is like going online from any public Wi-Fi hotspot. The services that passengers can avail in this context are internet access, webmail and webchat.

The rates for the mobile and Internet connectivity are fixed as follows: Passenger price plan for Internet on laptops (Wi-Fi), would be (pilot pricing) $29.95 for 26 MB per flight. Additional usage would be at $0.006 per KB. For the webmail (only body copy) would be at $9.95 and for the attachments it would be $.006 (per flight). For the Webchat the rate would be $4.95 for unlimited (per flight), said the statement.-TradeArabia News Service