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64kbps @ 40,000 ft.
jumpstop writes "The NYT Technology section reports that 64kbps is now available on business jets. Sure, you can read your email and surf the web, but can you blast away at Wolfenstein?"
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Wow so this could bring a new kinda mile high club.. Cyber Sex at 40,000 feet ;)
I would also like to announce that 56mph is now available in my house.
Also, as a special favor, I am offering 92 degrees Celsius to any interested parties.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
SPEED demons, the kind who like corporate jets that do 500 knots at 40,000 feet, are reaching the point where they can cruise the Internet at that altitude as well -- and at speeds comparable to a deskbound computer's.
This month Honeywell, the satellite service provider Inmarsat and the French electronics company Thales demonstrated a system in which fliers with laptops can be linked, by an Ethernet LAN or wireless connection, to an antenna on top of the fuselage, allowing speeds of up to 64 kilobits per second.
Laptop users need a network card or a wireless modem. The system, called Swift 64, is fast enough to handle streaming video or video conference calls using standard equipment.
The first market is corporate jets, but the builders hope to sell the system to airlines, too. The companies did not give a price but said it would depend partly on how much equipment was already on board. Many planes already have some satellite communication gear for passenger seat-back telephones and for the cockpit crew to use to communicate with the airline or maintenance base.
Boeing has a competing product that is in service on 11 corporate planes, and Lufthansa is hoping to offer it on a Boeing 747 late this year or early next year. Boeing and Lufthansa have not worked out how they will charge customers. Communications experts say they could charge by the minute or the bit.
A spokesman for Connexion by Boeing, the subsidiary that produces the system, said it would allow the use of palmtop-based e-mail service in addition to laptops, and speeds far higher than the Swift 64 system, 20 gigabits per second.
Tenzing Communications, a Seattle company partly owned by the European plane maker Airbus, also provides a slower satellite-based service on a handful of airlines.
Honeywell's demonstration plane, a Cessna Citation, a twin-engine business jet that carries two crew members and as many as eight passengers, carries an antenna about the size and shape of a surfboard.
Planes with long over-water routes often carry satellite antennas; older antenna models are steered mechanically to keep them pointed toward the satellite as the plane banks, climbs and descends. The one on the Honeywell plane is steered electronically. On a recent demonstration flight from Dulles Airport near Washington, the antenna was pointed at a satellite in orbit over Brazil that transmitted back to a ground station in Connecticut.
On the demonstration flight, a user of a Dell Latitude CPx found that the Web site of the Federal Aviation Administration popped up on the screen so fast that the system's performance was nearly indistinguishable from that of a desktop in a corporate office.
Such speed offers white-knuckle fliers new possibilities: for example, it took no time at all to download a 238-kilobyte aviation safety manual.
Does the whole plane have a 64k connection?
Or are we all going to have to share it between us?
And what happens when the 15 year old in row 27 loads up Gnutella and uses _all_ the bandwidth?
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Communications experts say they could charge by the minute or the bit.
Why not the flight? Or the day. I'd pay $15 to have a solid net connection on a 5 hour flight.
I'm looking at this from a passenger point of view, but I think we're eventually going to see (and need) net connectivity in the air.
And it should be cheaper then they think. Why go for a wired network in the plane at all? Pulling cables through a pre-existing airplane has to be expensive. A decent WAP which can handle 64 users at the same time and cover the entire cabin gives you a lan at ~$5-700 installed. Couple that with pre-existing antenneas, get a decent switch, and violla, you have internect connectivity in an average craft for a few thousand bucks.
Wi-fi is already becomming the standard at airports (even though current coverage stinks). Why not partner with one of the many wi-fi providers popping up? I don't subscribe to any of them, but if I found out that my subscription to boingo would keep me connected at the airport, in the plane, and the hotel when I landed, I'd sign up in a second.
The Internet is generally stupid
can you blast away at Wolfenstein?
:)
And if you did, would you get arrested or attacked by the passengers for wielding a weapon?
Maybe arming pilots with a plasma rifle would be a good thing. Or maybe they just need Jabber:
SkieHighPil0t: Help! We're being hijacked!
Sl33pyGrndCtrl: Thanks, SkieHighPil0t, but I'm away from my computer right now. Leave a message!
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Actually, I heard that the 64kbps is the net of the 56kbps you get going west against the jetstream over the Pacific and 72kbps going with.
While this is all cool and good, if these satellites provide coverage pretty much anywhere for airplanes, couldn't us slashdotters figure out a way to acquire the laptop PC card and any antenna(s) needed to use this bandwidth at home? I obviously don't know how hard (if even possible) this would be, but hey, if nothing else, it sounds like there is potential here for good-quality wireless Internet for the masses back on good 'ol planet Earth. Maybe even a reasonable end to Internet for rural areas?
You could play MS Flight Sim, and see how much faster you could get from New York to LA than the plane you're actually on.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my