VoIP at 40,000 Feet

Klaus Schulz makes history by making the first ever VoIP call on a commercial airline flight using Xten software. Xten® Networks, Inc. (OTCBB: XNWK) yesterday announced that VoIP history was made when Klaus Schulz, a former 3COM® Chief Technology Architect, boarded Flight 452 from Munich to Los Angeles on May 17th. Mr. Schulz did not know that he was going to make history on that day, however, he knew that he was going to be able to use the Internet on Lufthansa®’s first commercial “production” flight with the very much touted new service from Connexion by Boeing®, this, because he helped with the overall implementation of the system.

“Mounted on the fuselage of these Airbus® A340 longhaul aircraft is the cornerstone of Lufthansa’s broadband Internet system: The Connexion by Boeing antenna. It sends and receives data via over 10 geostationary satellites at 36,000 km up” said Klaus Schulz in a recent telephone Interview.

At cruising altitude of 40,000 ft., Klaus opened up his browser and was presented with the Lufthansa FlyNet® broadband Internet service, offering him access to a free Information Portal and also access to a fee-based Broadband Internet connection from Connexion by Boeing. After basic registration with Connexion by Boeing, Klaus set up a user profile and logged on.

The most astonishing and remarkable connection Klaus made was with his SIP softphone for Microsoft® Windows® by Xten Networks, Inc.

“After testing just about all the SIP softphones out there,” Klaus explained “I kept the Xten SIP phone on my desktop, because it was the only SIP phone, I could actually take with me when I travel. It was just there on my notepad‘s desktop waiting for me.”

Within a few seconds of launching, the Xten softphone started to discover the firewall and the SIP compatible router and tunneled through symmetric NAT, before coming back with a crisp and clear public phone number, reachable from any phone in the world!

“That was awesome! Unbelievable! Had no one else discovered this wonder of technology on board?” was Schulz’s reaction to the surprising discovery, “ I started to dial up and talk to my friends and co-workers as if I was in my office, with the same crisp and crystal clarity I am used to on the ground.”

The surrounding passengers almost spilled their coffee, when they started to hear Klaus talk back to his computer, and flooded him with questions in between calls.

“This is very exciting! I spend a great deal of time on commercial flights and for the most part my time is wasted because I live on the Internet,” explained Erik Lagerway, President and Chief Operating Officer of Xten. “Now I can make and receive phone and video calls, use my e-mail and Instant Messenger, all for the price of the in-flight Internet Access. Well worth the $30!”

Xten’s softphones are carrier-grade IP telephony SIP endpoints, delivering the quality of service and features large providers require for their customer base.

Xten’s feature-rich FREE SIP softphone – X-LiteTM – does not include some of the advanced features found in our commercial software but still provides superior call quality. Xten’s softphones are fully RFC3261 (SIP), RTP/RTCP (RFC 1889) and SDP (RFC 3264) compliant. They are available for Windows (Windows 98SE/ME/NT 4/2000/XP/CE), Mac OS X, Linspire and Pocket PC operating systems.