I posted something about this on the BA forum a while back, and (as
sbm12 has alluded to) it has to do with the fragmented nature of broadcasting in Europe. Whilst in the US you have one large area that is all one country, in Europe it's lots of smaller countries. Each of these has their own satellite broadcaster, they use differing encryption systems and have different languages that are broadcast. So basically to do the same as Jetblue you need to find space on a satellite with a high powered transponder with a Europe wide footprint and launch your own channels.
There are many problems with doing this licensing being just one of them. The language problem can be overcome by the fact that DVB-S (satellite) can handle many different audio channels on the same video. The other main issue is cost this wouldn't be cheap and the reasons
ScottC has mentioned.
Originally Posted by Jimmie76
Long long ago, I used to do some work on producing content for airline IFE. Interestingly one of the ideas mooted for the future was satellite as a delivery system, the idea being that one airlines satellite, over the Atlantic would broadcast to all that airlines planes. This would reduce the costs of IFE for the planes as the digital receiving equipment, was going to be cheaper and more reliable, and could offer many more channels.
I was subsequently told that, the main problem is the high cost of a satellite (both the actual bird and launching/maintaining it), and there isn't one already above the Atlantic one can use. Jet Blue have an advantage in that they only fly within America and therefore they can just use the exisitng feeds from DirecTv because they can always get a signal from it.
Also storage costs had been reduced for hard drives and it was cheaper to have it stored onboard which magically allowed AVOD which airlines preferred for the perceived enhanced value it gave to customers.
Wouldn't be surprised if someone did it, just hope they have deep pockets.