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Wireless Internet Launched on Lufthansa FRA - IAD
JpMaxMan writes "On flight LH 418 from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, DC, Lufthansa AG began on Wednesday a three-month trial for a new
onboard wireless broadband service
that allows travelers to connect to the Internet some 10,000 meters in the sky."
Is that they go through all this trouble to prevent bombs getting on board, yet they act like the plane will crash if I have my CD player on during take-off. Heck, if it could, and I wanted to crash the plane, I'd just turn it on and leave it out of sight!
I wonder how much this costs, and I'm assumming its satalite so does that affect pings for online gaming? Fragging from 10,000feet..........
does this mean i can finally join the solo mile high club?
I always enjoy surfing the net while high.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
It will be interesting to see how different countried react to this availability onboard - many countried are VERY paranoid about RF gear operating on an airliner due to fear of interferance with the onboard systems...
Personally I'm quite suprised that this is a wireless solution, and not wired onboard, as that would seem a much more 'acceptable' solution worldwide, and quite probably more secure for individuals.
I wonder how well seperated the network streams are between users? network sniffing count suddenly before very interesting
While it's better than my DSL connection, is it really enough to support up to 50 people? 3000/50 = 60, which is acceptable, comparable to dial-up. But 128/50 = 2.56! Ouch! If you've ever maxed out your upload while downloading, you'll know how it causes downloading to come to a crawl. I really think they'll need to seriously considering upping the upload speed.
Eventually the Internet will become an essential service in any business that's open to the public: malls, airports, schools, bus stops... just like drinking fountains, walkways, and bathrooms.
For the near future though, everyone is going to be trying to figure out how they can charge a few bucks a minute to let people with important business acces their $50/mo DSL line. I hope people just decide not to pay for these services. There's no reason why an airport/airplane/whatever can't afford to give access to a wireless AP just as a courtesy.I would definitely enjoy flying a lot more, and they'd get way more business from me by throwing stuff like this in for free.
The RIAA and MPAA, building upon their already close relationship with law enforcement agencies, are lobbying to give armed air marshalls the power to shoot on sight anyone caught engaging in "terrorist activities" such as file sharing and unauthorised humming.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Ticket: $200
Cab to the airport: $12
Drinks at then lounge: $30
Watching porn @ 600mph feet all wasted: $PRICELESS
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
from 10, KM high in the sky (in no man's territory), and be never convicted for it..... Next time i am travling on lufthansa, i am taking my 1 million email address CD with me.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Now we will see bums in their lear jets
warflying in close formation to the airliners
just to get the free internet access.
Most people aren't going to download large quantities of mp3's or movies while sitting on a plane. They'll do that before they leave.
The service is intended for websurfing. Think about what percentage of time you spend loading pages vs reading them on your high speed connection. Even with 50 people sharing the connection, only a few will be downloading pages at a time, and the rest will be reading what they've already downloaded.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Akmad469GoodTime: R U RDY 4 KILLING????
:(
SexyGirl17Muslim: no meal service yet
Akmad469GoodTime: I H8 NUTS!!!
SexyGirl17Muslim: u r nuts!!! LOL!
Akmad469GoodTime: ROFLOLOFLOLFO!!!!!!
As a pilot, and an American, I just have to ask one question:
What the hell is a meter?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Eventually someone will take their webserver along on the plane and then posts a Slashdot article about it. What happens when we slashdot an airplane?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Researchers have already bombarded commercial jets with all types of RF of many frequencies and varying power and found no flight threatening effects. This is due to heavely sheilded cables. The electronic device usage fear stems from cellular phone companies advising airlines not to use the phones in flight as they would have difficulting tracking the signal and the signal would reach many towers simultaneously. For the most part, RF is a non-issue. But still comply to keep the paranoid at bay.
Private aircraft on the other hand is more effected by RF than their commercial counter parts. Cell phones and ham radios have been known to crash private aircraft.
A recent story. A local car stereo business installed a TV and sound system in a private aircraft. The FAA was on that like stink on a hog. The equipment was not certified and threw out quite a mess of RF. Not to mention non of the cables were sheilded. Both the pilot and the company who installed the equipment were fined.
I recently received the device that creates the high voltage needed to strobe the lights on an aircraft along with its timer circuit. The device oscilated 24v at high frequency through a transformer and was rectified into two capacitors at 600v. this was creating noise in the radio and the part was promptly removed.
My father is a mechanic and supervisor for a private aircraft repair business. Thats how I get my info on the personal airecraft. I saw the commercial aircraft RF bombardement on Disconvery i beleive.
-Foxxz
You cant even talk about Bombs in an airport, now we're gonna have dorks on planes yelling about their FPS game, "Score, i just got the rocket launcher!!". As if the skymarshals dont have their work cut out for them, now they have to sperate gamers from terrorists.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
If FAA is relaxing rules to allow passengers to use 802.11b transmitter while flying, there are some possibilities to get cellphones approved for flights as well. I hate when flight attendants ask you to shut down your cellphone upon departure...
This finally proves the assertion that the reason for the ban on in-flight electronics was to protect Airfone and in-flight movies from competition and had nothing to do with RF interference. Now that the airlines found a way to extract revenue from this, suddenly spread-spectrum RF signals are perfectly safe.
Turn off your cellphone please. And put away that gameboy.
It's hard to feel sorry for the struggling airlines when lie as much as they do.
Let's see some power outlets...I hate how my laptop runs at 1/4 speed off the battery. Then there's long flights to Japan, and the fact that my particular wireless NIC drains my battery way quicker than I care to admit...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
This is amazing. Think about how far technology has come, that allows you broadband internet access on an airplane 35,000 ft high, travelling between two continents over nothing but water.
:)
Holy crap.
I know the very first thing I would do, without a doubt, is fire up XMMS and listen to Digitally Imported Radio, and smile
They give you great meals (especially for airplane food), free wine with your dinner, and movies playing all the time. And that wasn't even in first class. It's so cushy, no wonder they're the first to implement that wireless internet on a passenger plane.
Repeal the DMCA!
The wireless is the satellite to the plane...inside there is one wired ethernet connection for every 1st class seat, and one for every two business/coach.
802.11g? maybe later....
Great... I wonder if I can use Voice over IP! Seems like the connection is fast enough on the download side at least.. Although I would hate to see 60 people trying to make a phone call on that 128K uplink.
Does that imply they'll actually have a place for me to plugin my laptop??? With these fast processors, batteries only last a little over an hour (if even that), and on a long 6-9 hour flight, well, you get the idea...
AND, unless you're first class, there is no way they'll let you plug it in anywhere; unless you go to the rest-room and sit there for an hour to charge the damn battery.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Just imagine the possiblities for all the apple users.. load up ichat and look for Rendezvous contacts on the same flight! Maybe you could hook up with a female type you never would have talked to before.
magnanomous.
(For all you German challenged people out there, it reads: 'New device found. Device: Airbus A310. Start automatic configuration?')
b.
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
Popup ads aimed at airborne websurfers:
<flashing> Your aircraft may not be optimized!!!!
[ OK ]
Seduce flight attendants FAST!!
[ OK ]
Your might be in danger from TERRORISTS! Find out who is on your plane.
<link>Consumer/Credit reports
Noone else has seemed to say this yet, and you all knew it was coming
First war dialing
then war driving
now war flying!
I think wired would be more practical, but wireless does have it's advantages, I just hate the damned dongles (drools @ powerbook). How do they control who can use it? Do they give out a different WEP key or whatever?
Since they have been releasing all this hype about how wireless is a security threat as a terrorist tool, now they are putting it on aircraft. Well,if they are using wireless to hide their identity, at least we have the subjects narrowed down to being on a particular aircraft. They'll only have to weed through a couple hundred passangers to find the culprets.
Mine means my own, but how can this be if I owe for it?
Here's the text from the Boeing news release:
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Marketplace had a cool report on this yesterday afternoon that the reporter recorded as an MP3 file from the flight.
In the report he indicated that on first try his laptop didn't connect, but that Lufthansa had three connection specialists on the plane and were able to get him running within 5 minutes. Apparently the plane was full on reporters and other testing it out, so the connection was a little slower than is usually expected.
The thing that hit me was that they would charge up to $30 extra to use this feature. That might not be a big deal to business passengers, but I'm not sure the average person will appreciate that extra fee on their ticket.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I used to think the same as the original poster - that RF was a non issue, and simply allowed the aircarriers to charge more for services such as airFone etc...
Now that I've spent the time and energy getting my private pilot certificate PP-ASEL (FAA standard etc...) I can tell you that the reason for not allowing 'personal electronics' on commercial aircraft during takeoff and landing is a very sound one.
Commercial flights are always on IFR flight plans. This means Instrument Flight Rules. Thie does Not mean that the flight is being conducted in clouds or other IMC, but that the controllers can expect the flight to behave according to IFR rules.
Now - IFR rules are there for a reason. One - primary navigation - if you have a plane going at any altitude above 18k feet, it has to be on an IFR flight plan, and be positively controlled (Read vectored/guided) by flight control. However, the pilots are still required at all times to avoid things like: Mountains. Many Many crashes, both commercial and private, are due to CFT - Controlled Flight into Terrain. This is when a pilot for reasons of pilot-error, or instrument error, flies a perfectly good airplane and passengers into a mountain or obstruction.
Many airports in the US have large obstructions and mountains in the vicinity of their respective airports. Compasses - while very useful as a cross check, or for VFR day flying, have significant errors accross the US (many places as high as 15 degrees - such as the SF Bay area) - and hence are not always the primary tool - particularly when they show the aircraft heading and not course (with a crosswind, the aircraft is headed somewhat sideways with respect to it's ground course). They use the radio nav aids such as VORs, NDBs, VORTACs, etc...
. There are also 'hidden' hazards such as military training routes that cover much of Northern California and Nevada - where if you veer off course by even a few miles, you could be subject to military intercept procedures, or worse: a midair with a heavy and well-build military aircraft (which often slice thru civilian aircraft). To Sum Up: Unless you want your commercial flight to end up in a mountain, I suggest people don't play with this or treat it litely.
Interference with radio navigation signals is soo easy, that in a recent safety seminar held in Oakland - a flyer was presented that emphasized IFR hold zones - zones simply to keep waiting aircraft an additional distance from the runway and landing guidance ILS/other radio services.