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Wi-Fi Coming on U.S. Domestic Flights
jvptoad writes "The NY Times is reporting that United Airlines has received approval to offer Wi-Fi Internet access on its planes. Although it will be over a year before the service is available, I wonder if this will impact the discussion on cell phone usage in planes (which seems to be centered around the annoyance of people talking loudly on the phone). Add a headset and Skype, and you don't need a cell phone to have loud, annoying phone conversations on an airplane."
Actually, people seem to yell (or talk very loudly) into cell phones because the reception sucks on both ends, and repeating things too. I don't appreciate being yelled at, and I don't appreciate someone next to me yelling.
Then there's the irritating chirping of the two-way systems. I can try to blank out the talking, but the chirps are on a different order of hard to ignore.
I've been told to remove completely non-electronic ear plugs during take-off (or was it landing?). The idea is in an emergency, when chaos is generally winning, they want to be able to shout that the front exits are on fire, so go out the rear exit--and they want you to be able to hear so you don't lumber in the wrong direction and block the aisle.
-kb
but the jitter as your packet is relayed via satellite back to firma terra will be enough to discourage most calls (i have to imagine).
Well, despite what most people here on slashdot would have you believe (armchair critics who have no experience whatsoever which is nothing new around here), that's not the case. I had internet access on a singapore airlines flight from London to Singapore last week. I used MSN video conferencing as well as skype-out on my tablet pc and both worked flawlessly. Using a webcam and conversing in ink while on a plane was awesome.
Skype-out worked really well - a tiny lag (not annoying at all) and perfect audio quality. Calling someone from my tablet on a plane without paying the ridiculus $5.90/min charge for normal plane-land calls was awesome and despite the fact that I had to use the inbuilt microphone on my tablet, the people on the other end say they heard me suprisingly clearly. I got a bluetooth headset for my tablet as soon as I got to singapore airport
I should also note that the service had a web based live "chat" support and they were very helpful with my queries regarding the usage costs.
Ah, what planet are you from? I er, do satellite signals for a living. Still by far the vast majority are voice circuits - although technically they are all binary when spat out of the modems. Most of these are in the form of CEPT E1's and DTX-240's (Stanard IDR's), although there are still many IBS systems kicking around - more and more frequently we see packet switched voice, have always seen multiplexed and compressed, or simply jammed into vocoders of varied size and fed over any number of transmission types. Voice is still pretty common. Internet is not nearly as common as you would imagine, though there are huge numbers of private networks that sometimes carry internet. I haven't seen any reduction of voice in my visible section of the clark belt.