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JetBlue to Offer WiFi
andyring writes "Although some trans-Atlantic flights offer WiFi for a fee, JetBlue has won approval from the FCC to provide WiFi on their flights." From the article: "While Verizon's telephone service aboard commercial planes has not done well because of the high cost to use the phones, there has been interest in offering high-speed Internet access in the air to business travelers. The licenses will not mean travelers can soon use their cell phones in the air. The FCC and Federal Aviation Administration are still weighing whether to permit that."
What about phone calls over the internet, with services like Skype?
I had to use one of those phones they have on planes it cost me a bomb, I can only imagine this will cost a lot more than if you were say surfing on your laptop in a hot spot in Starbucks. But I welcome the move of wifi, I think the use of cell phones will cause more problems with people getting anoyed at other people talking loudly raising cabin tensions.
In Post-9/11 America, do not attempt to host a CounterStrike server on laptop and use WiFi to see if anyone's interested in a little ad-hoc FPS action.
As if the "brrrrrring" / "brrrrruuung" sounds of AOL instant messenger were not annoying enough in the college dorms.
we'll get a bunch of idiots blathering over VOIP.
:(
Great!
One of the last bastions of not having to listen to idiots shout their personal business gone.
Sigh.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I can't imagine the NSA being overly impressed by this. Oh, wait, data retention! Never mind...
Footix - President, Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things
http://news.com.com/JetBlue+wins+air-to-ground+wir eless+license/2100-1039_3-6079558.html?tag=nefd.to p
"A spokesman from JetBlue said he was unable to comment on what the company plans to do with its 1MHz license. Some speculate it will offer more in-flight video entertainment and Internet services. JetBlue already offers DirecTV service on its flights."
The way the post is written makes it sound like JetBlue is giving free WiFi on their flights. Not only is it not stated it will be free, but it's not stated it will be WiFi, just that they won some wireless spect.
I used the Connexions by Boeing service on a JAL flight recently. It was very good, $26 for 24 hours use on any boeing plane, and was fast enough to allow skype usage, and was much cheaper than the inflight phone :)
I can't sleep on planes, so it was great to check my e-mail and get holiday photos ready on the plane on the way back too instead of losing time.
Also there was an important notice that no ad-hoc connections were allowed for safety reasons, although how valid those were (I suspect: not very) I don't know.
Good thing that it isn't Bluetooth.r bus.jpg
http://www.triv.org.uk/~danny/images/bluetooth_ai
I have to say Jet Blue has always impressed me with their service, although unfortunately they don't fly everywhere I want to go. Has anyone seen a study detailing the return on money invested in passanger comforts by airlines?
Philosophy.
or the creepy roommate who watches ass-porn while I'm sitting 3 feet away from him in the cramped dorm room will now be 3 INCHES away.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
How about a mini-tasor gun in my armrest for the toddler behind me who keeps kicking my seat? And a fullsize tasor for his mother for being a stupid bitch?
How about a ceiling mounted electric cattle prod for the dude with the overstuffed backpacks that he shoved into the overhead, crushing my leather jacket?
If JetBlue could give me those things, and keep the blue potato chips coming until I say stop, I'll never fly another domestic carrier.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Jet Blue is the most amazing airline out there - cheap tickets, no hassle terms (i.e. you can change your ticket without penalty for a measley 20 bucks up until the flight departs), super-accomodating employees, nice, roomy seats, DirectTV, those delicious blue chips, and now this!
Knowing JetBlue it won't be very expensive either. They are truly the model of how an airline should be, focused on the passenger, their cost, and experience, not simply a government-bailed-out bloated corporation that sells seats next to each other for hundreds and thousands different than the seat next to them.
So bravo to Jet Blue - they already are my favorite airline, and they just keep getting better!
AE
JetBlue promised not to send its passengers' personal data to Homeland Security (or anyone else). But they did, they lied to cover it up, and were exposed. And they never were held accountable.
Expect every packet on their WiFi to be sniffed, analyzed and sent to the highest bidder. Including, but not limited to, DHS.
--
make install -not war
Skype is the first one that comes to mind. In fact, a hardcore business traveler wouldn't scoff at Nokia's $300+ cost for the 802.11 Wi-FI SKype phone. I, for one, can't wait until this goes from being a luxury service, to a standard one.
Just to pre-empt millions of posts: passenger mobiles/WLAN etc. are not a significant danger to the flight instruments and cause for the plane to crash etc. This has been dealth with before. Thanks for playing. Have a nice day.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
You would probably need special software to compensate of the doppler shift caused by the motion of the plane, depending on whether the WAP was in the front or back of the plane.
I find all this talk of internet access in economy hilarious. On most flights with the seat pitch what it is I can barely open a paperback book on the tray table. My laptop? Forget it!! It stays in the overhead bin.
Now you can work on your Writely document or Gliffy diagram on the plane.
Streaming ass porn over wifi? Dude, everyone views it locally on their hard drives.
In privacy violations.
In 2001-2002, they gave the feds all their customer data to "test" a person trackign system. I flew them in that time period, it was a wonderful experience at a great price, and I will never fly them again.
If everyone on a plane turned all their electronic stuff on at the same time the walls of the plane would relflect the radiation and cook everyone alive.
A flight I was on in February had to be diverted because a hijacker armed with a cell phone was demanding the release of prisoners from Isreal. I can only imagine what our fate would have been if he had been able to press the power button before some other passengers and I were able to forcibly subdue him. Fortunately, once we had him under control, one of the other passengers was able to use their phone to call 911.
paintball
I fly all the time on business and discovered JetBlue several years ago for my company's annual Orlando conference (I'm in Boston). Since I bring the wife and kids along, I used to play all the games I could to get free tickets from my miles (mostly American and Delta, both of whom should burn in hell forever). It always ended up costing a bunch of money anyway, and miserable connections through DC or Philly or Atlanta.
Business travel is misery, pure and simple. Last night American kept me on the plane for 5 hours before they took off from LaGuardia coming back from the Red Hat Summit in Nashville.... and the sad thing was that was not even in the top ten worst experiences I have had from American, never mind Delta (lost luggage three trips in a row once) and United (lost luggage going to Shanghai and put it on the next flight.... the next day) or AmericaWest (I can't even start here).
Flying JetBlue was like heaven. Seriously. It was just an epiphany; I mean how can these people do it so right when everyone else does it so wrong? Friendly service, clean aircraft, great snacks... even a free beer (as in beer) every time I've flown ("put your money away sir, this one's on us"). And if you need something from a service perspective, you can do it via phone or e-mail and a real person will help you get exactly what you need.
Well now they go everywhere direct, and are actually making Boston a hub. I recently went to Austin on JetBlue and should have gone to San Jose but didn't realize they fly there. In the last month they have been added to my company's Web booking app and I'm in heaven.
Latest story -- Was trying to bring my boy's godmother in from Phoenix for his high school graduation this month and neither Delta nor American could get me a ticket. (I am Platinum with 500k miles flown on American, every one miserable.) Finally I just said screw it, let me check JetBlue. Of course I find a ticket, direct, exactly for the dates and times I want, for under $300 including all taxes and fees. And I could have saved another $50 if I was willing to be flexible on the time of day, but why bother?
Anyway, this traveler recommends JetBlue to anyone and you'll thank me later. I guarantee they'll do something good with the wireless buy. Unfortunately TFA points out that Verizon doesn't have to turn over the spectrum until 2010, and my experience with that company shows they'll be in no hurry to do anything good for the customer.
I'm looking over the wall, and they're looking at me!
nope, this roommate didn't want it "stored on his computer" -- apparently he didn't understand caching.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
What is worse than the 14 hour flight and corresponding jetlag when my job sends me to China?
Being expected to telecommute from the plane.
Unfortunately, some of the coverage of this air-to-ground spectrum auction has had the wrong information and led to the wrong conclusions. I've been writing about this at Wi-Fi Networking News since early last year, and have covered the auction since its start in early May. Here's the real scoop. (You can read my run down of these auctions over at my Wi-Fi site. I was quoted in last week's Associated Press article on these auctions and on public radio's Marketplace early this week.)
First, it's not about Wi-Fi, it's about air-to-ground broadband. More on that in a second.
Second, JetBlue won the smaller of two licenses sold at auction.
Third, it'll be up to two years before service commences.
The auction determined which of three exclusive spectrum configurations would win out. The winning versions was 3 MHz to AC BidCo LLC, a sister company with AirCell, and 1 MHz to JetBlue. The 3 MHz license was widely seen as the desirable one because using standard EVDO Rev. A, there should be over 1.5 Mbps available in each direction. (The FCC designed the new licenses to handle EVDO and a few other standards, and the allotted spectrum is split symmetrically in air-to-ground and ground-to-air segments.)
JetBlue, the owners of license winners LiveTV, will likely use its approximately 500 Kbps downstream to carry streaming video or to spool video for inflight use through cached content. Upstream could be used for cabin surveillance and aircraft use. JetBlue might roll out this technology to other airlines.
AirCell already runs a general aviation (non-commercial) air-station network for in-flight broadband, and will be able now to cut deals with all the major airlines that want this. Their ultimate system should be lightweight (thus not a big fuel drag) and desirable.
Wi-Fi has to be tested separately, by the way. They won't be able to just turn this on. The FCC and FAA will require them to test their equipment with specific airlines and planes in order to roll it out.
With dual-mode cell phones (cell + Wi-Fi) plus Skype and other VoIP services on laptops plus Wi-Fi-only handsets, it will be likely that calling in flight will be very common.
The other part of this deal is that Verizon AirFone, which controls parts of the 4 MHz that was auctioned off, now has up to two years to move from 4 MHz to a vertically polarized 1 MHz (overlapping with LiveTV's license). License winners are allowed to give Verizon financial incentives to move faster. AirFone is on 4,500 planes, including government ones, and is highly underused. With this move to new equipment, AirFone might dramatically drop its pricing...or airlines might ask for the equipment to be entirely removed.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
There is always Southwest, I suppose, but I like them for different reasons.
If you have WiFi (802.11b/g), you can make outbound long distance using any SIP client (i.e. X-Lite) communicating to any SIP provider (i.e. Voxee) at 1.1 cents per minute... Why would you want to use cellular ($0.07/min - $0.20/min) when you can make calls via WiFi ($0.01/min)?
I don't mind the ability to surf the internet on flights. Phone calls, however, I hope will always be prohibitively expensive. That way people will only use them if they really have to. Please don't make me have to sit next to people talking on their phones!
So, do you think the airline will choose to filter the internet to make it harder for people to look up porn on flights? Then again, airports always have tons of porn mags. I've never seen anyone buy one though.
One giant leap for mesh network.
And up skirt stewardess pics!
Unfortunately I serve as "IT super-guru" to my consulting group and get upwards of 50-100+ emails a day asking for advice on one question or another. I say "unfortunately" because a) I'd rather they get competent staff for their projects and b) some of the questions are OMG!?!?! answer now or we lose the contract.
For all the disparaging remarks:
a) Yes, there really are emails/phone calls that are worth $5+/minute. This sounds stupid but when you can answer a question in $10 worth of time that saves a $500k contract then yes, all of a sudden $50/flight seems reasonable (and unfortunately this happens more often than sane/rational people would like to imagine)
b) I would much rather get an email and reply (quietly) in kind then spend 30 minutes going "could you repeat that, you broke up" until the person next to me bludgeon me over the head with nearest available blunt object.
Finally, if you're a control freak who's never been on a 10+ hour flight to (insert deity(s) of choice) knows where... STFU. You have no idea what it's like to be stuffed in a aluminum cigar tube with no contact to the outside world and minion's doing who knows what to your servers while you're out of touch (yes, yes... in a perfect world I'd subjugate minions who were better than I but in my company the checkbook rules all)
Regards,
A very, very bitter techie.
But why should they have to spend $.30 on a pair of earplugs to allow them and everyone else to get what they want, when they can just demand that everybody modify their behavior for their convinence. After all, the assholes demanding silence in public places are more important than everyone else, right?
However, the airlines could block the service. For instance the local library here blocks FTP access, sure one can get around it by changing ports (same went for AIM when I was in high school), but I highly doubt the average business traveller will know enough the change the port.
This is true, but couldn't another port could be used. My school blocked AIM too.
They first had a program that ran in the background that quit any unauthorized apps. The 1st solution was to turn off the program squashing app.
Then they made Task Manager unavailable. The solution was to change the application name.
Then they kept you from access Program Files and DLing software. The solution was to use AIM Express from aim.com.
Then they blocked aim.com. The solution was to use aim.co.uk.
My point is that there is usually a way around it, to an extent. If they tried to block VoIP software from functioning in order to force their proprietary expensive phone service as hard my school tried to block AIM use they would be the focus of some serious anti-trust, so I don't think it would happen.
Flights from Singapore to Japan offer a free internet connection...for couple of month already.
The logical move is to ban the use of phones period- cell or VOIP, wifi without phones is possible.
I wouldn't mind WiFi on a plane nearly as much as cell phones. Putting aside VOIP, that is. There will be nothing worse than allowing cell phones to be used on planes. That would be the ultimate and final indignity to whatever remains of what used to be a high-quality experience. First they stopped the good food. Then they stopped all the food. Now cell phones? Please, no. Not that.
But it will happen eventually. There's no real technical reason to ban the use of cell phones in the air. There never really was. All that remains to be done is for someone with a big enough bag full of money to arrive at FAA and FCC HQ and it's a done deal. I remember when flying used to be a great experience. *sigh*
"I want these motherfucking phones off this motherfucking plane!"
While I, a flyertalk poster, agree that it will really suck when the vast unwashed masses spend a JFK->ICN hop chatting to their book club (yes, that's 16 hours), it seems unlikely to happen any time soon.
First, we've already had the possibility of this. Airfone covers the lower 48 pretty well, and some vessels have satellite service as well. I've both called and received from them for several years. Admittedly these calls were cut off a bit short given how expensive they looked to get. Every now and then they'd run specials; one of my guilty pleasures was MUDding from an HP200LX palmtop back when your seatmates thought that was hot tech.
There's no good reason for the airlines to make it easy to bypass the Airfone pricing. So after all you nerds get done posting success reports about skype and gtalk, don't be surprised if jitter for UDP "mysteriously" starts wandering into ham radio range. Second, paid international business class is one of the things that keeps many US-flagged carriers alive. And now things get weird.
Oddly, many companies are willing to buy business class fares for their employees on long flights, but find in-flight communications expenses to be strictly unallowable, regardless of ticketed class. Never mind that the difference between discounted business and discounted coach can be thousands of dollars....wait, what's this "can be?" Math: five dollars a minute is *only* $300 an hour. If I'm going to sleep four hours anyway, can I have a seat in the back of the bus if I get decent net access for some of the rest?
But up in business class, the selling point is "we'll deliver your employees to their destination and they'll be rested." If Phones On A Plane interfere with this, we're either going to see lower international C fares, or FA nazis telling people to hang up and fly.
And at least for flights arriving in the US, failing to follow the directions of a flight crew tends to lead to a very quick trip through Customs....
I shall call it... WiFly!
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
They have talked about setting up a cell 'tower' in the plane that goes over a sat link so your phone works properly.
sigh...
We've all seen the TV shows about how someone is being driven out of their mind because they can hear every thought that everyone around them is thinking. Well, that is exactly what all those strangers around you are doing with their cell phones and the loud voices that they are using to stream their conscious thoughts to the people on the other end of those conversations. They are ignorantly and crudely subjecting us to their every thought with their loud voices. And it is annoying as hell. I am constantly asking strangers to PLEASE keep their thoughts to themselves by either talking softly or by taking their side of their conversations to some place that is at least semi-private.
It's bad enough to find my car stuck behind a phone booth with a green light in front of it, or to find a phone booth moving dangerously close to me when I'm driving down the road, but to be subjected to the loud vocalizing of the streams of consciousness of strangers in public places where I have to be to travel, for instance, is not something that I care to have to deal with.
What's wrong with ass-porn?