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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."
People should use the non-reg links when posting about a NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/technology/06uni ted.html?ex=1275710400&en=022fb6cd810b1719&ei=5090 &partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
What are the chances I'll be able to set up a Counter-Strike server on my flight to Washington?
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
Sure the technology will be there (vonage, skype with 802.11 phones)...
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).
Still... real-time data connectivity while in the air will greatly increase my productivity while flying.
Now United needs to offer power injectors at each economy plus seat
I have to admit that I would probably use this quite a bit to check my email and play on the web on flights.
However, I'll miss the fact that there was a space where I couldn't do those things. There's so much pressure on people to be available all the time, that it was nice to have forced downtime.
I am overjoyed.
Statesmen serve to better the country and help the people.
Politicians serve to better themselves and help friends.
I flew LuftHansa (the German partner of United) 3 weeks ago as they were starting offering this service, and i did try it for free. It works pretty well. Normal cost is 10 bucks for an hour or 30 for the whole flight. Unfortunately, i was travelling in Economy where you can't plug your laptop. And Wifi drains my battery pretty fast. still managed to send emails from above some really remote places...
What is it with you people who get upset when people talk on a mobile phone? Do you also get annoyed at people talking face to face in your presence? Do all forms of conversation in which you are not involved annoy you, or is it just the ones using a form of technology?
For the longest time airlines were telling us not to use electronic gadgets, fearing "interference with the navigation system." Well, if they're OK with having bunch of passengers putting out 1 Watt each @ 2.4 GHz, how come they were objecting to the little blackberry (albeit at a different frequency) and other two way radio devices?
The crapper was a pretty exotic place to get on IRC from. Imagine it from 30,000ft ... on the crapper.
Using headphones is of course just common courtesy.
That said: earplugs. Earplugs, earplugs earplugs.
Not because people perhaps sit on the phone, and not because people will sometimes talk to each other. Not even for the guy snoring loudly throughout the flight or for the two-year old who's screaming himself across the pacific ocean.
An airplane cabin is _noisy_. That constant whine/hum/hiss is the single most tiring noise I know of. True, you conciously tune it out after half an hour or so, but it's incredibly fatiguing. For a long time I didn't realize that a good deal of my jetlag, fatigue and inability to sleep on the plane was actually due to that incessant noise (that, and that I never drank enough liquids - nonalcoholic liquids).
Once I started using earplugs during the entire flight (you can hear the movie just fine through the plugs) and making a point of drinking water throughout, the difference was huge. I arrive reasonably refreshed, not bleary-eyed and disoriented. The day-night cycle is still screwed up, of course, but the impact is much less.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Three things.
1. Many kinds of radio receivers create a local "intermediate
frequence" (IF) version of the received signal at a much lower
frequency because it is easier for circuitry to deal with those low
frequencies. Unfortunately, this IF signal leaks out, and those
frequencies are close to those used for navigation. The FAA,
reasonably, objects to that.
2. Cellphones are based on the idea of short range communications
(from your phone to the celltower you could likely see if you knew
where to look) allowing the bandwidth you are using to be reused
many times in one city. When you turn on your phone in a plane at
high altitude, your phone (being far from any cell site) turns up
to full transmit power, and blankets several *states* worth of
territory. A lot of frequency reuse can't happen when you do that.
The FCC, reasonably, objects to this. (How can cellphones inside a
plane soon be allowed? By having a small cellsite inside the
plane, instructing phones on the plane to turn their transmit power
to the lowest setting.)
3. General purpose conservatism. A powerful transmitter (ham radio
anyone?) can also mess with lots of nearby electronics. Given all
of the confusion over what kind of electronics some device might
be, and given how pissed off you would be if your plane were
plummeting to earth because a bad decision, being conservative
might be OK, even with you.
This doesn't mean silly things don't happen. I was once (long ago)
told I couldn't listen to my CD player on a plane. The airline
uniformed backhaul "expert" told me that the CD player had a "laser!",
and it could interfere with the plane. Nonsense. I expressed
disbelief, suggesting that the laser was safely inside...but the
expert didn't buy it and he had authority over me so I shut it off.
However, just because he was completely wrong in his argument doesn't
mean that every airline safety rule (air in the tires?, gas in the
tank?, sober pilot at the wheel?, no shootouts happening on the
plane?) is silly.
-kb
I guess I don't understand why you think latency would be a problem. The service is likely going to NOT rely on geo-stationary satelite links, so there's no speed of light issues to geo-stationary orbit 32,000 miles away. Communicating that far away requires pointing a parabolic satelite dish precicely at a single point in the sky. That would be rather difficult in an airplane moving side to side, up and down, etc.
What's far more likely is they'll use existing cellphone towers, and possibly the same LEO (low earth orbit) satelites that satelite phones use. Planes fly at only 40,0000 feet or so, so that's only about 8 miles up. LEO is only about 200-500 miles, so the lightspeed time is rather short at 500/186,0000 seconds. Really they'd only need to use LEO sats flying over remote parts of the US, or over the ocean.
AccountKiller
Posting anonymously so I don't get in trouble tomorrow when I go to work tomorrow ;-) :-) Any Connexion equipped plane has a few Linux machines running on it (no wonder I love my job).
The plane linked in the picture is CBB1, our test platform. This plane has 3 of our antennas on it: two phased array antennas and one mechanically steered dish antenna(the Melco antenna mentioned above). The first two (very flat) rectangular bumps towards the nose of the plane are the phased array antennas. These antennas are each capable of simulatenously tracking multiple satellites, which can be used to provide directTV as well as internet service. They can also be configured to use one antenna for receive, one for send. None of our customers has multiple phased arrays due to the cost (VERY expensive) and this antenna is only used for government and business jets. The rearmost (largest) hump is the Melco antenna that was mentioned above.
Connexion is actually far superior to what is offered by Verizon. We offer far more services than anybody here knows. We offer our service on planes, vehichles, and boats. We also offer much more bandwidth than Verizon. Our system has the capability to recieve at nearly 80Mb/sec (none of our customers has ever used this capability since it requires extra antennas that increase cost and drag (one antenna == 20Mb up and down)), and transmit at nearly 20Mb/sec. We also offer a number of other services that I don't think we have anounced yet, but are REALLY cool.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention, Connexion is based on Linux