Nary a week after JetBlue expanded its in-flight internet services on BetaBlue comes news that the airline's LiveTV unit will be picking up Verizon's Airfone network. As you can glean, the purchase is being made in order to further "develop in-flight email and internet services," and while no purchase price was disclosed by either outfit, we are told that LiveTV will receive "100 air-to-ground US communications towers and Airfone's corporate and government aviation clients on January 1st." That's nice and all, but can't we get something out of this sooner?

Telephone? Broadband data? Something more sinister? JetBlue isn't yet saying what subsidiary LiveTV LLC wants to do with its freshly-acquired slice of FCC pie in the 1MHz range. What about live TV, you ask? The obvious answer for such an obviously-named company doesn't seem as obvious when you consider that they already have that angle covered through a deal penned with DirecTV; the spectrum had previously belonged to Verizon's Airfone service, making in-flight phone service more likely. LiveTV paid just $7.02 million for the license at auction -- a far cry from the billions traditional mobile operators have been known to shed on PCS bands, yet they could end up with one of a very small number of services keeping you in touch from the friendly skies. Since LiveTV is a wholly-owned subsidiary, it's possible that they'll be offering service to carriers other than JetBlue. So yes, the much-maligned Airfone appears to be fading away, but with any luck, airlines will be carrying on the time-honored tradition of charging multiple dollars per minute for the privilege of annoying your fellow passengers.

Update: nope, sorry, the slice of spectrum wasn't in fact in the 1MHz band, but was in fact 1MHz in the 800MHz range -- totally different, and much more interesting, if you ask us. LiveTV's license expires in 2010, which means they only have three and a half short years to figure out whatever the hell it is they just invested that 7 million on, and put that spectrum to good use. Thanks, Simon. [FCC PDF]