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More On Airplanes And Internet
fonixmunkee writes "as a sometimes-traveler for work, and a huge nerd, I am always excited about news like this. it appears that some airlines may start offering internet access next year when you need to get that internet fix at 35,000 feet. I was pleased when they started selling wireless internet in airports, so this is another welcomed suprise for techie travlers. apparently they want to use satellite to get high-speed connections to the planes in the air. pretty cool. " Too bad Northwest isn't going to have it for my DTW -> NRT -> KUL -> PER for CALU.
First first post from an airplane!
Nerd + surfing from plane = Mile High Club
I haven't flown in a while, do they also offer power connections for your laptop?
Cuz a 12+ hour flight wouldn't be very much fun after your backup batteries die.
And remember, the foldable tray will stop your willie from overheating:)
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I've always wondered why airlines got the policy that using a portable cd player or radio in flight is dangerous while laptops aren't.
At least that's the situation on all domestic flights I've taken. I've got a suspicion that they want to compete with trains etc. for business customers and therefore don't give a damn about their own rules.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
It's safe to use laptops etc on a plane... ?
--- Stop the world! I want to get off!
If you commit a crime via the Internet at 30,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, whose jurisdiction does it fall in?
A plug for a mate IPSky talks about the market and the issues and is a pretty good starting doc on this sort of stuff from a technical/management perspective. The interesting part of some of these elements is that it enables additional information to the pilots and potentially between planes. Getting the internet to the passengers is relatively simple, combining it with elements like TCAS to reduce the risk of collisions and also to enable less reliance on Air Traffic Controllers in areas where they have no Radar coverage.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Inflight internet access, especially at a flat rates, makes me wonder about the potential for using VoIP. If the latency introduced by the satellite connection doesn't completely negate its use, using VoIP software on a laptop connected to the airplane's Internet connection would offer considerably cheaper inflight calls.
Secondly, how long until we see groups of people smuggling on battery powered Linksys (et al) routers. $30 split a few ways is always cheaper...
we can use laptops, but not mobile phones, CD players, etc?
What gives?
Great idea, but bizarre....
It is safe and permitted to user consumer electronics onboard aircraft with several exceptions. Wireless-radio communications devices are prohibited because they are naturally in the habit of emitting radio signals. Aswell devices are prohibited during take off and landing.
Does any one know what frequency this would operate at? I have always wondered exactly what frequency interferes with flight electronics and which ones don't. Do hand cell phones interfere with flight systems in reality or is this just a way of making you pay to use the ones built into the back of the seats? I have wondered about this for a while.
...is a printer and no longer do you have to use your imagination to join the solo mile hile club :-)
But seriously, what would the point be of internet connection when you are flying? Other than reading news? Is email _really_ that important?
They are talking $30 per leg.
I imagine that at those prices it will go the same way as inseat phones. One of the phone carriers is killing their $5 per minute service because there was on average 1.5 phone calls made per flight.
If you are carrying all that extra weight, you have to be able to get people to buy it or it is just going out backwards.
Experience inflight life with Yngwie.....
lamest post ever --The campain against lame /. posts
I wonder if streaming porn all the way to Vegas will take the fun out of it once you're there.
Like the English and The Kiwi's spell it :)
as one of that last stories points out, they where the first
Wardriving at 30,000 feet...?
Hmmm... maybe we'll start to see crackers taking flying lessons.
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
I DOWt anybuddy is going to be too excited about being able to check their email in flight, after waiting several hours, to get to the laptop disassembly counter, then several more hours to bored.
At least if the in flight movie is bad, I can download my own.
It ain't any of the big US based aitlines. They don't want to innovate, just whine while Southwest eats them for lunch.
I swear, they're like the RIAA.
perhaps you can use an airplane to fly to a country (perhaps soviet russia) in which failing the first post is tolerated
YOU FAIL IT!
-1? what the fud? that's about a plus 10, just for relevaNTs robbIE?
you aren't in these felonious stock markup/?pr?/accepting money for false advertising/accouNTability debacles, are you. we're sure not. we hope you're not. if you are, it's best to square up right away. mod me up robbIE, you know what's gooing on DOWn hear, doN'T you?
They have been trying to do Internet access in planes for years; I won't be surprised if this ends the same fate. I think the problem is that not too many people will use it and that people are not willing to pay $30 per flighty for access for just a few hours. They could have a monthly fee that would be more feasible.
I wish them luck anyway.
Free Instant Site Inclusion
it was confirmed today that the reason for New Zealander Richard Pearse's crash and failure to claim first flight was caused by his modem cable reaching its elastic limit.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"Too bad Northwest isn't going to have it for my DTW -> NRT -> KUL -> PER for CALU."
Oooh. You might want to have that looked at by your doctor before it gets worse. In a few days, you could be ROTFLOL, IMNSHO, d00d.
what's up with that? the guise from fuddles&fudstorm.con right in the announcer's booth wit you know robbIE. is VA lairy on the dole/viagra yet/still?
At least THAT's a place where the ping time won't be so low as on the ground
Imagine a beowolf cluster over wireless of these (at 10K + altitude!)
Enough already.
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
Now all three passengers behind my seat and my two neighbors will know the name of my wife and kids, what a great week-end I have had, how bad the food was, and how much money the deal closed.
Err, what if one of the three happened to be an executive from a competitor ? Think about it for a minute :)
And I think that most people will not want to watch pr0n on my screen throughout the flight either !
I'm heading to Kenya for the holidays to visit a sister studying in Nairobi. It would be a great present from Northwest to find my flights back (NBO->AMS->DTW) allow for it!!
Sky's the Limit for Cisco Aironet Wireless LAN Technologies "Any traveler with a laptop computer or portable device equipped with a Wi-Fi compliant NIC card or enabled with Wi-Fi embedded inside will be able to log onto the wireless network. As part of the service, Lufthansa will also operate a 10 Mbps Ethernet wired network onboard for those passengers without wireless-capable computers. With 380 seats, a typical Lufthansa 747 has as many network connection sites as a mid-sized company. "
faster faster... 'til the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death...
There hardly is such a thing as a computer crime. A crime is a possibly illegal bad action by which you physically harm one or more human or animal individual, like killing, or raping. Stealing may be in some cases, for instance stealing my paycheck will get me starving, stealing from the wal mart is not.
What you meant is "if you commit a misdemeanor"
Wireless in airports is expensive (upwards of $1 a minute in the few that I've seen it). I can't imagine what they'll charge for internet access in an in-flight airplane. It's going to be horrendous, and thus as useless to me as the wirless in the airports. Ho-Hum.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Is it that what nerds refer to when they say that they are in the 10-mile high club?
Almost ten years ago, I worked for InFlight Phone Corp., which offered dial-up connectivity (19.2K, which was fast for the time) from commercial flights, along with digital voice phone, faxes, games, etc. Each seat had an embedded PC, talking to a file/radio server buried in the cargo bay.
The system actually worked, and was installed in over 100 planes (mostly USAir). Unfortunately, it cost enormously more to set up and operate the system than customers were willing to pay, and the company went out of business.
Years later, I was on a plane that still had the system installed (but turned off). The rumor around the office was that it cost $250K to remove the now-dead system from a plane, and the airlines weren't willing to foot the bill, so the dead system stayed in planes for years to come.
..AND INTERNJET exploder.
Too bad Northwest isn't going to have it for my DTW -> NRT -> KUL -> PER for CALU.
Yeah, and don't forget, like, your OAD that is attached to your BDT sticking out of your ROR pointing to your BRD for LITH.
Would be interesting to see if the system can be installed in a Airbus aircraft, as Lufthansa has a lot of those presently on routes over the Atlantic
Soon (2007) there will be A380 with upto 470 seats. The story will become even more interesting
What shall we call the award? The Slashdot Colonoscopy Award, for having your head that far up your own ass?
PS. The folding tray may stop your todger from doing a Hindenberg, but the little magnetic catch may zorsch your hard disc.
"That price sounds about right to Rob Vollmer, 32, a principal in Crosby-Vollmer International Communications, a Washington-based public-relations firm.
Vollmer, who has flown 140,000 miles this year, does so much work by e-mail that he sometimes feels compelled to surreptitiously check messages during flights with a wireless Palm device, though it's prohibited."
I believe the correct word here is illegal!!!
The clock has now started ticking Mr. Vollmer, expect the Feds to be banging on your door very soon!
...a beowulf squadron of those...
This will never happen? Why? Terrorism.
"I was pleased when they started selling wireless internet in airports..."
In Singapore airport, wireless and cable based internet access is free. When travelling last year via Singapore I wandered out of the plane and into the internet access area, booted up (using my cable as I had no wireless adapter) and I was online in the time it took for w2k to boot. You can get wireless adapters there to use too, or use an IR port if you have one.
"...DTW -> NRT -> KUL -> PER for CALU"
WTF???
What about when your about to land? They just cut you off mid connection? About to send that document to the office, or in the middle of an important system/database callout fixing session and they just cut you loose! "Sorry about that Boss, I know we had 20,000 clients who couldn't connect for 4 hours, but Delta cut my service halfway through and I couldn't get back in til I got into the airport lounge, after customs, the gift shop, duty free, cavity search, etc!"
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
Now I won't be able to escape from /. anywhere.
OK so now when I go to Japan on that god-awful 11 and a half hour flight I get to play go constantly on the kiseido internet go server ?
I would pay for that.
I'd have to be careful not to start a game that meant I'd still be playing when they switched the service off for landing though...
graspee
Has anyone ever thought of the security implications of allowing someone to have silent access to the rest of the world on an airplane? Let's set up the scenario: Some nutbag with a portable GPS device on his laptop is able to provide real-time coordinates to someone on the ground via AOL Instant messenger or some other chat program. With the elevated threat of surface to air shoulder-mounted rockets on the news lately, isn't this giving terrorists a new way to track planes? Call me paranoid, but as cool as it would be to be able to get an IRC fix at 40,000 feet, I just don't think its a very wise idea in these troubled times.
As with the phone rate, which are really high, I guess they will charge something really high per minute. 2.99-3.99$/minute? :)
A little digging reveals that the frequencies that cell phones operate on aren't the same frequencies aircraft use for navigation/communication, and those $5/minute airphones are actually cellular telephones!
In fact, it turns out that the cell phone ban wasn't an FAA regulation until very recently - it was an FCC ban! The cell network isn't designed for rapidly-moving phones, nor is it designed for phones 30,000 feet up in the air. Instead, it's designed for stationary/slow-moving phones at or near ground level. An airborne cell phone can wreak havoc with the network; that's why the FCC banned them on airplanes. The ban has nothing to do with safety.
ZDNet article on the topic.
Detroit to Perth, for those people who don't know. Perth happens to be the major city furthest from the east coast of the usa.
I'm a Perth boy living in Ann Arbor Michigan. So I have done this (not this particular route though). A couple of days of flying and floating around airports is not fun.
You know your along way from home when your cheapest option to get home is an around the world ticket.
I know someone who knows someone who knows someone...
It's not "internet access", it's the ability to browse several "static" sites, updated on the ground before takeoff.
In other words, you can check out http://www.sluggy.com Sluggy Freelance, but not http://www.hotmail.com read your e-mail.
I am the only one traveling in economy class ;/ You know, the place where you worry more about how much space betweeen each seat you will find, so you can stretch your legs every now and then, and about what kind of weird food will they serve...
Will Windows file sharing be blocked? If not, it would be lots of fun to see who is in your network neighborhood. Kind of like the old days with cable modems.
Could someone have a little pop-up window show up on passenger laptops that says "This plane has been boarded by alien space invaders. Stay calm. They mean us no harm"? Or maybe "I am Colonel Ogo Mumbasso from Nigeria. If you help me transfer money, I will arrange frequent flyer miles..."
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Did anyone else notice that Northwest Airlines website is NWA.com? I mean, geez, them guys is WHITE!! Either that, or Dre and Ice have free flights for life...
Maybe instead of Internet access, they should work on giving passengers enough room to use their laptops.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
...I'm usually on vacation. For my part, I LIKE being 'unwired' for that time. It's one of the few times that I can actually read, write, sleep, or just stare out the window and think without any fear of interruption or mental "clutter."
I have to wonder if this is going to have any impact on social skills, such as the art of good conversation, or meeting someone new? Is connectivity going to, eventually, become as ubiquitous as advertising, to the point where someone might panic if they can't get to their E-mail for a couple of hours?
If that does happen, is it necessarily a Good Thing?
All my hardware has an 'Off' switch. I'm not in the least afraid to use it! How many other people will be able to say the same ten years from now?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I am a Boeing employee who thought the whole idea was stupid when they first started Connexion. They deployed this whole ton of people for the project and ended up laying off 80% of them when they realized the airlines weren't interested - mainly because Boeing wants a huge cut of the profits. Last I heard, Boeing invested $400 million on this boondoggle. They were going to charge $30/hour for access and counted their profits by counting in-flight hours of planes in the US, ignoring the fact that most flight hours are commuter trips in the one-hour range where you can barely get your laptop out before the announcement that you have to turn it off comes on.
Procedure:
- Go outside on a cloudless day.
- Look around.
If you're within 10 miles of an airport (even a minor one), odds are, hey, there's a plane!GPS coords don't add much to information already so available all you have to do is literally open your eyes and it comes streaming in. From what I've seen on the news, most missles are fired at planes taking off or landing (usually taking off from what I've seen), in plain sight. You just can't hide a plane taking off, so please, on behalf of all us freedom-loving citizens, don't propose half-assed "solutions" to the non-problem; we've got government officials working on that full-time already and God-forbid one of them see this "non-problem" of yours and decide to try your non-solution.... more freedoms gone for no gain whatsoever, just to make someone look like they're "doing something".
If you check the in-flight rag, you'll find that the airlines don't allow passengers to use GPS receivers. I know this because I used to use mine to watch the flight path when I was totally bored. That was before they thought to disallow their use (they weren't yet common).
"as a sometimes-traveler for work, and a huge nerd..."
Watch out for the Huge Nerd penalty when flying.
Uh, won't they have to re-weigh the aircraft with the new equipment added for THIS service anyway?
come on fhqwhgads
I hear everyone talking about using it for international flights - but seriously, how would you be able to even take advantage of it with the crappy up time of current batteries? I mean, we're talking 3 hours TOPS.
I think that if they are going to start adding services like this, than they need to add DC sockets like in automobiles, allowing the use of laptops or other devices (at least for transcontinental jets).....
If aircraft are Internet connected, they should have webcams installed around the cabin sending time-lapse images to the ground (tunneled for security). The cameras don't have to be visible (and probably shouldn't be).
If they're going to disarm all the passengers, preventing/limiting their response to a problem (hey, I'd just as soon have child-proof Mace cannisters at each seat), then at least the ground will be able to "tune in" and monitor aircraft. It would also help identify those causing a problem.
This isn't a privacy issue; you don't have any expectation that no one can see you when you are on a plane, especially airline personnel.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
The number of people replying who have obviously never flown in a plane is just astounding.
"can we use a laptop?"
You can use electronic devices once the plane is over 10,000 feet. The captain will announce it. On an Airbus the light over your seat will com one, you know the one that says "approved electronic devies..." That includes laptops, CDRom, radios what ever.
"what about battery life! no one thought of that! I am so smart!"
plug in you laptop using the power port under your seat. Virtually all long haul (57,67,77, A3x) planes have these.
The cell phone thing has been explained, although they do work, same deal for two way pagers BTW.
Oh yeah, Perth is pretty boring, although King's park is cool.
JON
The U.S. spent a million dollars developing a pen that could work in space. The Soviets used pencils.
And porn is available in dead tree format too!
--
But then again I thought VCR+ was a stupid idea and would die a quick death--so what do I know?
Has any one unknown to you given you any programs to load?
Do you have any SSL programs, Pirated Warze, MP3's or linux operating system?
WHAT You have Linux with SSL... Airport security we may have a terrorist hacker at gate 12.......
Plus you can gross out would be terrorists by showing them this website
I flew on united yesterday, and they were offering data connections through their Verizon AirFone service for $5.99 for the entire flight. That's right, just six bucks for up to six hours of data connection. I was kicking myself the whole flight for now bringing my laptop carry on.
Yes, the speed is between 4800 and 9600 bps (depending on how many people are connected), but it's better than nothing. Unfortunatly, I can't find anything on the web about this, but there were large posters in the airport terminals advertizing the new rates.
It is entirely possible for devices like an MD player to interfere with radio equipment. I once encountered a problem where a Sony CD player interfered with a ham radio receiver in the 2M band (144-148 Mhz), you could even hear the music work it's way through the demodulator of the receiver. This was probably due to harmonics from the delta-sigma DAC extending into the VHF range. Since the aircraft voice communication band is in the low VHF range as well (108-136MHz), I find it entirely plausible that an obstensibly non-transmitting device can interfere with radio communications.