PLUGGED IN FOR TAKEOFF NEW TECHNOLOGIES KEEP TRAVELERS ONLINE AT HOTELS AND UP IN THE AIR.

Byline: Robert Monroe Staff Writer

Cable-ready? That's so '80s.

The better term for the new decade is broadband-ready, and the medium is going to send the information superhighway to more than just your house - for better or worse.

Last week saw local unveilings of two technologies: one that brings mega-communications capability to hotel rooms and another bringing it to air travelers. Both could be available by the end of next year.

Their creators acknowledge that they're two more steps toward total Internet ubiquity. Some observers of the Internet and society, meanwhile, consider it further erosion of something people might justly consider a right: the ability to be unreachable.

Consider that within two years, the executive will embark on a business trip and find on most airlines a port in which she can plug in her laptop and get instant Internet access. She might not even need the laptop since the airlines think they'll be able to modify the personal video monitors already on some aircraft to provide the service.

The executive reaches her hotel room and turns on the television set. On screen she is notified that there is an urgent e-mail waiting for her and a waiting videoconferencing Webcam trained upon her. In a sense she never leaves the office.

No doubt constant connectedness will prove to be a boon to some travelers. Some Internet observers, however, wonder about the flipside. A. Michael Noll, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication, says facetiously he's waiting for coffins to be wired so the dead can have Internet access. The effect of never being able to leave work, however, isn't so funny to him.

``We'll have the airplane filled up with a new cyber-galley slave,'' he said.

Certainly that's not how NXTV and In-Flight Network see it. James Miles, president and chief executive officer of Woodland Hills-based NXTV sees only upside in his hotel room service for the business traveler and vacationers.

The system, which will be available in the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel and at other test sites by early next year, will offer an unprecedented array of services. Emanating from the television set will be a sky's-the-limit selection of digitized movies to watch, video games, viewable faxes, and e-mails and voice mails which can be played at the touch of a button.

The hotel guest will be able to circumvent expensive telephone surcharges by dialing numbers through the television and paying only what they'd pay to send an Internet message thanks to NXTV's voice data technology. They'll be able to watch keynote speakers in their pajamas rather than trekking down to the ballroom downstairs to see them in person. All this and they'd be able to use the video checkout function.

``We want to bring the entire business center functionality into the hotel room,'' Miles said.

The hotels would be only too happy to provide such a luxury. The revenue source for NXTV will be the network's advertisers. Infrastructure installation costs are minimal, and the hotel would be able to sell more through the television screen.

``They need to produce as much revenue out of that room as possible,'' Miles said.

The company, backed by a group of strategic investors led by Hamilton, Bermuda-based Global Crossing Ltd., is also installing the broadband network in a test housing tract in Seattle.

Of course, the executive might get all his work done before he even reaches the hotel or the house. At Burbank Airport on Thursday, In-Flight Network offered a sneak preview of a technology to bring advanced telecommunications to airline travelers.

IFN, a joint venture of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Rockwell Collins, hopes to begin offering broadband Internet access and live television by the end of 2001. Soon all airline passengers might find a video screen and keyboard at their seat or at least a port in which to plug in their laptops.

``You do just what you do on the ground,'' said IFN Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Wales. ``We bring the rest of the world to the aircraft.''

The company is racing neck and neck with the Boeing Co., which is developing a similar network called Connexion. While Boeing claims faster connection speeds, 20 megabaud to IFN's 200 kilobaud, both ventures rely on satellite transmissions to provide access to passengers, bouncing everything from football games to newscasts to downloadable files onto the plane.

Boeing spokesman Javier Mendoza said his own experience illustrated Connexion's value when he flew from Los Angeles to New York to the April launch of the product. He gave up trying to use an expensive in-flight telephone with a poor signal.

``I was working up until I was on the plane, and then I was stuck on the plane for six hours,'' he said.

Lufthansa, the German airline, takes at least partial credit for translating the military technology to the commercial application behind IFN and Connexion. The company put out a request two years ago looking for contractors to develop a broadband network its pilots could use.

Dietmar Kirchner, Lufthansa's senior vice president of corporate purchasing and properties, said the service could be revolutionary. Airlines could profit by allowing passengers to select a much wider variety of duty free wares online during flights and pick them up in baggage claim afterward. Omission just of the duty free cart could save thousands of gallons of fuel every year.

The broadband network would be valuable enough if it remained in the cockpit, where the transmission of e-manifests could sharply reduce flight delays, said Kirchner at the IFN unveiling.

``We have five delays a day in our hub in Frankfurt just because our planes are waiting for documents,'' he said.

But despite the excitement over the novel technology, Kirchner has considered the ironic situations it could create. Shortly after Wales heralded the seemingly contradictory benefits of giving travelers in-flight entertainment and more work to do, Kirchner said he wondered if some fliers will take a stand and seek out airlines without broadband access.

``Maybe some airlines are chosen because they have a quiet cabin. We have to be careful,'' said Kirchner with an almost melancholy smile. ``Maybe the businessman will hate us, but the companies will love us.''

The speed of lightning-quick technological advances like these are giving organizational psychologists pause. They might be the only ones who have time for pause, said Tyler Blake, a California State University, Northridge, psychologist who specializes in workplace issues.

Blake said ubiquitous communication will have to lead to its own etiquette rules as electronic mail did when it first appeared and as cell phones have just in the last year. The boundary to be set is the time an employee should expect to be incommunicado.

``The effect of never being able to get away from work is a serious thing,'' said Blake, who said the problems the technology creates will go unnoticed at first because of its novelty.

Robert Foster, executive director of the Center for Management in the Information Economy at the Anderson School at UCLA, cautioned against the making of snap judgments. He said ground rules will be set as the novelties enter the mainstream.

``People will select what they want and what they don't want. That's the main thing,'' Foster said.

As for USC's Noll, who currently works from home and within easy reach of e-mails, even the telecommute made possible by computers is cause for resentment. A pervasive Internet makes him long for the tedious rush-hour commute to work on Los Angeles freeways.

``There's not even time to sit and wait in the car alone,'' he said.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) In-Flight Network's Tom Hauer, in front, and Brian Collins of Rockwell Collins, try the new in-flight Internet access from Burbank Airport on Thursday.

(2 -- 3 -- color) After flying in from Iowa to help get the system working, In-Flight Network's Tom Hauer goes online in the air Thursday. In-Flight Network is among the leading technologies working on providing Internet ports for laptops on airplanes.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer

(4) President and CEO of Woodland Hills-based NXTV James Miles believes the potential for his hotel room service is unlimited.

NXTV