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In-Flight VOIP Coming Soon
hdtv writes "U.S. airline customers are likely to be thrilled with an opportunity to sit next to someone constantly chatting on the phone. Information Week magazine is reporting that government auction is opening a way for telecoms to introduce voice-over-IP links on in-flight communication systems." From the article: "Airfone already offers phone service on many flights, but its high cost has limited its use. JetBlue has declined to say what its LiveTV LCC unit would do with a winning frequency. Although many frequent flyers and airline attendants favor a ban on the phone chatter, Connexion by Boeing, whose Internet service is already offered on nearly 200 international flights a day, notes that there have been no complaints of in-cabin incidents about the technology. The Connexion service is regularly used by passengers to make VoIP calls. "
whenever I fly I always get told that I can't have wifi on on my laptop, nor can I use a mobile phone, and I think they even frown upon using gameboys on take-off. Isn't is danerous to have an internet connection on a plane? can it not interfere with the machinary? They don't let you use mobile phones in hospital because of the danger to heart machines; surely this is just as important; or is this just because I'm not american and you don't have the same concerns as us
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Connexion by Boeing, whose Internet service is already offered on nearly 200 international flights a day, notes that there have been no complaints of in-cabin incidents about the technology. The Connexion service is regularly used by passengers to make VoIP calls.
Really??
I tried the wireless Boeing Connexion service on a flight from Singapore to Australia late last year. Ping times at best were around 2000ms and often I lost connection completely - needless to say - no way would VoIP work with those conditions.
Has anyone had any luck with this service and if so, where abouts or is this just marketing hype?
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
Nice link spam, user "hdtv" pointing to a commercial website, wahoo!
a special legal dispensation for beating motormouths into unconsciousness with phones as retribution for the irritation factor on a long haul.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Isn't is danerous to have an internet connection on a plane?
no.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Doubtless these VoIP conversations will appear on the Letterman show in a "Top Ten" list of the most annoying aspects of airplane travel, along with crying babies and seats designed for underage midgets.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Airfone already offers phone service on many flights, but its high cost has limited its use
You know what else is limited on airlines by cost?
Everything.
You know what would limit the cost of such services on airlines?
Somehow being able to take away the monopoly of an airline catering to its customers aboard its own jet.
AirFone is expensive because it's the only game in town. Making phone calls on airplanes will remain expensive until there are multiple carriers on the same flight. Good luck with that one.
Our customers have been able to do voip calls using our softphone on intercontinental flights for a year or so, given a decent IP service on the plane. I have even been in a teleconference with one of our employees who was somewhere above the atlantic ocean.
Downside: Latency. These calls have to go via satellites, which means a typical delay of several hundred milliseconds.
The problem with these potential yak-fests by seatmates and by nearby or loud passengers is being unable to escape from them. That will be quite stressful for some folks. It's not possible mid-flight to walk out of a plane in disgust. It's easy to foresee a spike in "air rage" incidents. The airlines may be forced to limit talk hours on longer flights (say two hours and up), or to provide "sound hoods" (although it's difficult to see how these could be designed to work well in such cramped quarters).
These first efforts at mass access to in-air telephony will be mildly interesting social experiments.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Is VOIP is on a separate network? Or is it sharing the same network as the digital fly-by-wire system? Since Hollywood is remaking everything from the 1980's, I can see a whole new generation of Airplane movies where a terrorist attack is averted because everyone uses the VOIP to call relatives and the plane crashes due to a lack of bandwidth while the pilots making out with the flight attendants in the cockpit.
Some carriers have been offering phone and fax services onboard for quite a few years, with reasonable pricing (~$1/min, IIRC). You'd just take the handset in front of your seat, switch it on, swipe a credit card and dial. While every passenger can afford a quick phone call, it is too expensive to talk for more than a few minutes, which I think is a good thing.
where's all that Karma?
Mythbusters actually tackled this one not too long ago (episode 49). If I recall correctly, the final verdict was "Plausable." On most modern jets, the electronics and navigation equipment are shielded, so cell phones and electronics won't interfere. They showed that by taking a device that simulated cell phone frequencies and cranked it up on a private jet on the ground, and the avionics didn't even blink.
But when the wiring wasn't shielded, some of the devices did move the needles, which could cause an issue on some older (or presumably cheaper) airplanes. Also, since you never really know what frequencies devices may start using tomorrow or what kind of output they'll have, the airlines probably decided to ban all electronics just in case.
Frankly, I don't blame them. I'd rather them err on the side of their planes not falling out of the sky.
However, if they use their own equipment (or, in the case of wi-fi, equipment whose frequencies are known) that is well-tested and verified not to interfere with the avionics, I don't see any reason for them not to install it and use it. Will they charge for it? Of course! They have to recoup the cost of testing and installation, plus some of that equipment is specially designed to be used in the air, not just your cheap Linksys router from Newegg.com. And yes, of course, they want to make some money off of it too. Blame relatively cheap air fares or chalk it up to greed, but I don't see anything wrong with it. If you don't want to pay for it, just don't use it.
Oh, by the way, I wouldn't try to get around this rule if I were you. If I recall correctly, doing so is a felony offense.
Same place to deal with crying babies and anyone who snores.
Or maybe airlines should just offer special areas in the plane for people that do not want to be disturbed. Would you pay 3times the ticket price for a private area free from the rest of humanity? It works on boats and trains. Cheap tickets you sit with everyone else, expensive tickets you got your own space.
But yeah it is an intresting social experiment, how much are people willing to annoy a group for their own needs and how willing is the group to put up with the needs of an individual.
It is nothing specific to cellphones. If you honk your car in the middle of the night to say goodbye you are just as much being an asshole.
What I think is new is that it is more anonymous. A family that constantly has guests departing in the night and making noise will have to deal with the neighbours during the day. You are going to have to live in that neighbourhood for years to come so you better behave.
This is far less the case with a cellphone. You will never see those people in the airplane again so who gives a fuck if they hate your guts.
It is a reason some companies have put up a sticker on their vehicles to provide a phone number to call if the driver behaves badly. Without it the driver couldn't give a damn since he will never face the person he cut off in traffic. With the sticker he stand a real chance of being told of by his cheff. I seen several co-workers being reprimanded for people complaining about their driving in company vehicles.
It would perhaps be intresting to see if the people that make annoying calls are themselves annoyed by other people.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Instead of offering VoIP, instead offer content-neutral Internet access, and let customers use their own choice of VoIP providers.
The round-trip delay due to the speed of light for the geosynchronous satellites used by Inmarsat is at most ~500ms. The extra 350-500ms is caused by Inmarsat processing delays.
Not really sure why you were seing such high latency with Connexion.
I'm guessing they were having a bad day, or there are places in the world they don't route well to. Measurements of Connexion's system on various flights seems to indicate a typical round trip delay of ~700ms. (I seem to recall a figure as low as 650.)
For interactive network usage (anything other than file transfer) latency is critical, and that extra 150-300ms in Inmarsat's system makes it marginal at best. I'm sure the corporate users you speak of think the service is acceptable, but they're comparing that to not being connected at all.
Note: I do not work for Connexion, never have, and probably never will.
Just curious, why not just provide wired ports in airline seats (some airlines already provide power outlets)? Some pros and cons:
+ Connectivity without any safety concerns.
+ Issue of wireless channel capacity is avoided.
+ Revenue (probably negligible though) for airlines by sale of ethernet cables.
+ VOIP also taken care of (at least using softphones from laptops).
- Airplanes need to be eth-enabled (cost issue and also probably ruled out for existing planes).
Seems to me that low-power wireless solutions such as Bluetooth or 802.15.4 (Zigbee) could also play a role here.
Time to reintroduce the old smoking section in the back of the plane. This time not for smokers, but for yakkers. However, I do remember how I always would get a seat in the last row before the smoking section.
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Once people finally get the idea that talking at a normal level works just as well as shouting into the phone, the annoyance factor becomes no worse than any other quiet conversation around you.
With cellphones, part of the problem is that there's no foldback to the earpiece, so there's no feedback assuring you that your voice is being heard. Do VOIP clients do this better? I know the one I use via an ATA and a standard DECT phone does, but I don't often use the PC for VOIP calls.
I also don't frequent wi-fi hotspots much (other than mine!); do VOIP users speak too loudly the way most cellphone users do?
VOIP instead of cellphones might prove to be the lesser of two evils for airline communications!
With so many planes in the air, it should be possible to rout packets from one plane to the next. It is just like the Internet works, but now the nodes are moving. It saves thousands of miles (up and down) to the satelite, so your ping rates should improve.
Bert
Patent attorney opposed to software patents. The above idea is a case in point that for software inventions you don't need any expertise, and not even a glass of beer to stir up the brain cells a bit. In case someone patents this, remember you saw it here first, Mother's day 2006.
Why would you get that just for being too stupid to buy a $.30 pair of earplugs when you know that your going to be confined in a small room with a bunch of people from the genreal public who will be talking more than you want to hear.
Or for being so arrogant that you feel that everybody else should change their behavior to make you happy, when a $.30 pair of earplugs would let you have what you want while everybody else can have what they want.
Last fall I flew Lufthansa to Europe and it was the first flight that I've seen wireless Internet available. It was about $10/hour or $30 for the whole flight. I, of course, had to give it a try to see how it worked. It was great.
My wife noticed that the woman in the isle across from us was wearing a headset and microphone and talking into her computer. We assumed she was talking to someone using what my wife thought was skype. If this was the case then voip is already in-flight.
For most passengers I'd rather them chatting on the phone than trying to chat with me.
If I pull my 3 month old phone out of my pocket here and go to the web, it makes the speakers 3 feet from me buzz (and yes, I know why, don't need to explain it to me).
TDMA (GSM) phones put out a lost of electromagnetic hash. If the tower tells the phone to use a high power setting and the phone obliges, it could easily mess up equipment that measures small currents (like an EKG).
And that's with a modern phone. This won't go away or even get better until GSM (and other TDMA techs) go by the wayside. Which doesn't appear like it will be soon.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I think free internet would be much cheaper, more informative, and quieter.
this is definitly one context where you can really assume there is zero privacy considerations.
because remember, virtues like respect for privacy are only for when they're convenient.
-judging another only defines yourself
at least JetBlue has the free directv, etc.... so you can put on some headphones and drown out the phone chatter.
This space available.
..having to listen to someone blather on loudly in the neighboring seat on a flight. At least not if they lift the ban on compressed air horns.
Cell phone calls were possible back in 2001. How else would Mark Bingham have been able to call his own mother and tell her "Mom, it's Mark Bingham..."
I think I'll call my own mother and tell it's "[first name] [middle name] [last name] [second last name]."
Wait if cell phone calls were possible back in 2001, why would the air lines take so much pride in a multi-million dollar project to make cell phone calls possible in 2004?
Troll +(-10)
I know of someone who on various planes and with various airliners ran a Sony camcorder during takeoff AND during landing. The plane didn't crash. The pilot never announced any dangers. The plane didn't weave or bob or sideslip any of the runways. Nothing of significance came about. No flight attendants perused the aisles. We all know someone who gets on the phone as SOON as the plane lands, or someone who is texting or trying to talk or play a handheld game until the LAST minute. I don't really worry. I say if commercial electronics that sprung out of a lot of military research and commercial competitive and dense FCC spectrum allocations can't take off or land in the same or general signals that are present in every major city (TV, Radio, emergency, construction, walkie-talkie, cellular, CB, Ham and other radio signals, the phooey on THEM for not shielding the wiring harnesses and control signals... What the hell would the pilots do if some hobbyist set off an intense electromagnetic burst near their local airport and a plane were landing? Sure, the FCC MIGHT localize and find it, but from general EM sources, NO plane should be crashing short of a cosmic or nuke EMP burst!
I once went to the cockpit before takeoff and asked the pilots (back in 1995 or 1996) about how high over San Jose, or at least how many seconds after wheels depart the ground I needed to wait to use my own camcorder after takeoff. He said about 45 seconds, and then after some right-bank we make, we're clear. I eagerly and carefully counted the seconds. I got my footage, or at least shot footage.
Now, I've become quite cynical in life and am not afraid to say what's on my mind. I have a friend who is a co-pilot of a Japanese airline. I asked him about some stuff. He's had a few close calls in the air, but not related to passenger personal electronic equipment in the cabin. I myself feel the planes are already sufficiently hardened from errant commercial gear. I don't buy the line that electronics can crash the plane or interfere with the landing aides signals the plane relies upon during automatic/autopilot landings and other events.
So, I told my friend what I think. The airlines just don't want passengers shooting film and video during critical evolutions: landings and takeoffs. IF the plane crashes in those regimes, it's possible the recorders they don't OWN will get into the hands of someone who might give it to the NEWS. The airlines control the black boxes, and I gather (from watching shows and reading things) they are encrypted and require special devices to pull out the information. But, a HandyCam with spectacular crash footage, yelling, moaning, crying, kicking with all their might the seats in front of them, pounding the armrests in futility, whimpering and simpering, and cussing and shitl flying about before g-forces takes over would NOT be what ANY airline or traffic safety board wants in the hands of the public. He mildly laughed, but kinda, sorta emoted in body language "Yeh, they wouldn't want that footage in public..."
But, my feeling is: we go when we go. I want to SEE such footage if it exists. We see all kinds of rapes, eviscerations, beheadings, and more in Hollywood, but for some reason, the plight of REAL people is regarded as so reverent they grieving survivors of the crash victims "deserve" some privacy and respect. Well, I buy a part of that, but I don't give a rat about the possiblity of air travel dollars being lost because genuine footage got to the public. If they are so concerned, they should just ban the presence of such equipment IN THE CABIN and do something about the lousy and persistent theft or pilfering or excessive invasion of luggage that is checked into the lower compartment.
Things that I DID experience as frightening (but, still kind of puts a smile on my face, so much so that I have had to hide my face betewen the cabin and the seat in front, are:
-high g-turns after takeoff-- I just wish we'd turn HARDER sometimes, but that would upset many PAX, and might spill or
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
They got "regular" seats for cheap tickets where you spend the entire journey in a seat maybe a bit larger then the one in a normal train. And then you got your cabin train. Watch a movie like Orient Express or Silver Streak to get the idea.
If they got private rooms in airliners today I am flying the wrong airlines.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wrote about my voip experience on Connexion a couple a weeks ago. The latency is horrible, the speed is marginal, and pretty much the service is only good for slow web-browsing and email. Fastest Wifi Hotspot ever
Arrrrgh!
$2.99 for a bottle of a few dozen foam earplugs. Each pair is good for a couple of flights. The very small surcharge on a ticket is worth a lot.
Better yet, get some Etymotic 4P 'phones & plug 'em into an iPod full of your CD's.
I fly about weekly. Listening to favorite music at low volumes -- the roar of jets, as well as babies, etc., is blocked so effectively by these things -- makes for surprisingly relaxing travel. (Excellent hi fidelity, too.) Takes down the stress level a couple of notches. Read, snooze, whatever.
You might not like having to isolate yourself from fellow humans, but I don't get complaints about the ill effects because you choose not to.
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
that passenger airliner doors were designed to be virtually impossible to open if the cabin is at a higher pressure than the outside air (as it is in flight).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I have a sure fire way to make VoIP non-annoying! Its called "sidetone" and its missing from all cellphones! Regular phones use them!!!! Sidetone sends some of your voice to your ear. This keeps you from screaming into the cellphone, and if its nice and loud, you can (and will want to) whisper. The only reason sidetone isnt in cellphones is the battery drain. BUT on an airplane, there could be powered VoIP phones which could strong sidetone.
In other words, your shade of gray is better than mine.... BS. You make noise all the time. You do things that other people would rather you not do. The difference is that because cell phones are reletively new, you and the other neo-luddites feel that you have some moral superior high ground, when in fact you are just arrogant. When you stop talking in public, then you will stop being a hypocrate.
Yeah, call me a pessimist, but whenever I see the words "Coming Soon" and "Government" close together, something makes me want to laugh.
...to just reading a good book on airplanes?
Most carriers (if not all) still can't get the quality issues completely sorted with ground-based VoIP solutions, and they want to run it to an airplane now?
Obviously a big issue is that packetized information follows a different set of rules than the traditional TDM voice communication non-VoIP uses - so the "Internet" is really a bad place to have time-sensitive information travel without a healthy bandwidth margin and robust network design. However even on some carrier networks doing VoIP that involve internal gateway-to-switch paths (no Internet, though it may traverse the same IP backbone) timing and latency issues still come up.
I fail to see how VoIP will make it to an airplane successfully, given that packet loss and delay are likely to play havoc with most of the known solutions to call quality issues.
More than a year ago a colleague used Skype while on a flight with wi-fi support. Worked perfectly. You can get wi-fi on more and more airlines these days, some even reasonably priced. No explicit VOIP support needed.