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Boeing Connexion, No More Wi-Fi at 30,000 ft?
symonty writes "After 6 years and one billion dollars, Boeing is evaluating whether or not their wifi for planes connectivity business can be a viable business. " I've never had the actual pleasure of evaluating it or not; some folks, however, have said it's a great service.
Who is going to pay for an Internet connection on a really long flight when their laptop battery can't carry a charge long enough to use it all the way? I could use my LifeDrive, but that's not the best browsing experience. I wish AMTRAK would get wifi, as they have power outlets next to every seat and their trains take longer than aircraft.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
How on earth did they manage to spend a *billion* on wifi? The systems in the plan are still wired, so you should only need to shield the cockpit and any more backwards-mounted instruments if you're worried that wifi operation at a completely different frequency to aircraft systems will affect the instruments, autopilot or ILS in any way. I'm astounded that it even cost a few million, let alone a billion. What the heck have they been doing with all that money?
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I fly a lot and I have yet to be able to get a WiFi connection on a plane. And given the astronomical prices of in-flight phone service, I suspect it would be too expensive even if I could.
If Boeing wants WiFi to happen on planes, they need to make sure it's universally available, they need to include it free in first/business class, and they need to charge 128kbps) in economy class.
If a suitable deal could not be reached, Boeing would be prepared to shut Connexion down, even though the service works as advertised and is used by a handful of international airlines on long-haul flights, one of the sources said.
Boeing has not said how much it has invested in Connexion, but people familiar with the situation say it is about $1 billion, according to the Journal.
Some industry officials say the business, because of lack of interest among U.S. airlines in outfitting their fleets with the system, may be worth no more than $150 million, the report said.
It's amazing that after 6 years with a working system, Boeing won't stick with this. It's been inevitable that Internet access would extend to airplanes and Boeing has it and now plans to give it up. I suspect someone will buy it on the cheap and turn around and make a profit on it in short order. Boeing may rue the day it turned its back on a potentially lucrative market all for lack of patience.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I was fortunate enough to have enough miles and therefore went with a first class seat. They had cigarette-style power plugs, and I had a car adapter for my laptop. They gave a free 1 hour coupon for Connexion, and I paid the full price for the 5 hour flight. What a godsend having the ability to surf while in the air, it makes the flight go much faster. Without a power plug, as is still standard for coach class, I wouldn't buy the service. That's the gist of the problem.
Charging $27 to use the service on a coast to coast flight might have something to do with the poor uptake on the service. If that's close to what it's really costing them to provide the service then they were bound to lose and if it's several multiples over cost, they deserve to lose.
So they lose either for being stupid or being greedy.
Surely it would be cheaper and easier to simply ensure that the inflight entertainment has a decent porn library.
Can you see the average flight attendant understanding that your bluetooth skype phone isn't a cell phone? Also, it only takes one wizzard that decides the flight from DC to Dallas is the perfect time to download Superman Returns instead of watching it like decent folks to screw everyone on the plane that paid for the service.
STFU & GBTW
I've used it or some service like it (no idea if there's more than one; these flights are on an Airbus not Boeing) on flights between Japan and Europe, and believe me, it's worth every penny.
Twelve hours of slow agony is transformed into an almost pleasant experience. When you can email and IM friends and family; check all your regular sites; search and read up on research you didn't have time for earlier; check out an endless variety of flash-games and other trivia. The mediocre in-flight movies just can't compete.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
My girlfriend and I had the opportunity to use this onboard Lufhansa flights between the US and Germany a couple of times, and it's really a nice way to pass the time. Well worth the 30 bucks, for us anyway.
Plus freaking out the other business class passengers when we set up a live stream and demonstrated the various positions you can put the seat into live from 30,000 feet to our friends back home :-) Considering that the connection is via geo-sync satellite and double-NATed, I was surprised at how well the streaming worked; only about 2 secs rtt, and we managed to push 200 kbit/s.
There's... someone on the LAN! Some... thing!
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It will happen, but it will pretty expensive.
First they took away the free peanuts. Now the paid Wi-Fi is going away too. What's next? The seats?
Boeing was at its best when there was competition. I think the Boeing 747 was/is the greatest airplane ever designed. Now only 2 state sponsored (Boeing with military contracts, Airbus with direct subsidy) remain. Monopolies seem to be such a huge drag and waste so much money it is not even funny. I am European and even though the new shiny Airbus 380 is pretty interesting technology wise I cringe every time I have to think of the billions of subsidies that went into it.
at $19.95 flat, Japan Airlines offered me unlimited access using Connexion at true broadband speeds. Sure the latency is low, but it's a huge boost for productivity. And seriously, how many internet cafes you know offer 13 hours of service for only $20 ?
it'll be really sad if Boeing cancels the service, cuz Connexion is one of my primary reasons I'll fly JAL or Lufthansa.
It's a great service IF you fly business and your seat has power.
Now I might have to read a... a... a.... book!
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Didn't I read it here that they're planning on short-distance flights for standing passangers.
Think of the fun during turbulence:D
Defining Statistics and Social Research
It wasn't terribly fast, but once I read that it'd be available, I charged up a few extra batteries for my flight from Chicago to Copenhagen (SAS Airlines).
Also keep in mind that most airlines have power outlets in their higher-class seats. Some even have them in every seat. Check out http://www.seatguru.com/ to see the ammenities in various airlines' planes.
I even used a softphone (Cisco IP Communicator) and made a phone call from the flight! Sure, there was about a second of lag, but people around me were pretty amazed (even an SAS pilot sitting next to me - he had never seen such a thing..).
I paid the $30 for 8 hours of service and would gladly do it again.
If I was an airline trying to attract those business travellers I would be using this service for sure. Just think about all the added value you could add outside of inflight wifi.
I can't believe there isn't a market for inflight wifi.
I was just telling someone the other day that internet access is the one thing I need to make long-haul flights more bearable! I'd probably pay up to $100 per flight for it...
I worked as an intern for Boeing during the summer of 2001 for an antennas group that was developing the antenna to be used. It's a phased array antenna. Not easy to design and not cheap to build. It's also a good deal more sophisticated than the wifi antenna hooked up to your laptop. As the airplane is moving it has to move from one satellite to another as it gets out of range of each successive connection point. A phased array antenna effectively steers its pointing direction electronically taking advantage of constructive and destructive interference of the rf waves. It's not like your old tv or radio antennas that you have to jiggle around until you get a good signal. Also, you're trying to send/receive the signal at such a great distance that there's no way you can get enough power to make a connection using a simple omnidirectional antenna. Since the airplane is moving, the antenna has to know where the satellite is and constantly keep itself pointed at it. When that satellite gets out of range it has to know where the next one is, etc. It also gets much more complicated to transmit radio waves, especially broadband, once you try to get them through the atmosphere.
I can't say that I think it was a wise decision on the part of Boeing to continue the development of Connexion after the whole 9/11 thing happened but this technology would definitely be worth $1 billion assuming that the airline industry was what it used to be. Boeing saw the airline industry plummet after 9/11 and still chose to keep spending money on this despite having customers back out and watching half the airlines in operation file for bankruptcy. Very cool technology but, unfortunately, it just came together at the wrong time. Maybe in a few years it will catch on again.
Just used this last week on my flight back from Germany.
Flying Lufthansa, I had just purchased a T-Mobile hotspot pass while waiting for my plane. Noticed the Connexion access point, but didn't pay attention to it once I saw that my plane had internet access with the name of 'Connexion'...
The price was simple; Either $9.95/hr or $27.95 for the whole flight. I had 9 hours ahead of me, I figured spend an hour now, an hour later. I fired up my MacBook pro and went through all the signup and paid my $28.
It was an amazing experience. Being able to surf at 11,600 meters was incredible. It was almost like the internet had been reinvented and this was my first experience all over again.
If this service were to go, I can only imagine it'd have to be replaced by something better.
Long live Connexion!!!!
I've used it on trans-Pacific flights, and it was well worth the $25 or so I paid for it. It made the flight go by much so more quickly, and I was able to access the company VPN with no problem and get loads of work done throughout the entire flight.
The thing was a godsend, especially when you're trying to get stuff out of the way so that you can enjoy your vacation when you're actually at your destination.
Sure, latencies were occassionally high (and there was a 20-minute period of no access), but it was otherwise fine to use for basic web access, ssh access, and IM/IRC-ing.
of being able to AIM people:
me: OMGHI2U
friend: sup?
me: OMG GUESS WHERE I AM LOL!!!11one
friend: ??
me: THIRTYTHOUSANDFEETHIGH!!
friend: you got some good weed, man...
Yes, Boeing getting out of the broadband business, but they are not the only providers of air based broadband. Enter Aircell. They already offer an Iridium (satillite) based data connection products and services. Yes, it's dead slow. You're not going to be playing Doom3 or any other FPS over this link.
A few weeks back Aircell also picked up the spectrum currently used by verizons air-to-ground telephone service (Magnastar). Air-to-ground communications offers lower latency, higher speed data connections. Magnastar will be phased out starting in 2008, coinciding with Aircells new broadband service.
Aircell is poised to roll out a major broadband service by 2008.
If the concerns about internal systems being disrupted by WiFI are such as big deal, why not just build Ethernet ports into new / revamped airplanes?
I realize that some people's Palm Pilots, etc. don't have Ethernet jacks. But pretty much every laptop does. Wouldn't this at least make the concerns about WiFi-related interference of flight systems just.. go away?
> The biggest issue with these kind of internet connections is the price, which would certainly stop me from using it unless the company is willing to foot the bill (Anyway, I'd rather be watching a movie or sleeping than working).
Work? No. Company pays the bill? Yes! ;-)
I have a friend who does a lot of international travel. He uses and loves in flight WiFi. It costs him about $30 a flight. He uses it to check email (hence the company pays) and then plays WoW on it. And his latency is low (100-150). Now $30 sounds like a lot of money for a connection, but as all of us who play WoW know hours can seem like minutes. How much is it worth to you to make a 12 hour flight feel like a 12 minute flight?
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
One of the major reasons that this service didn't become more widely available was the contracts that US carriers have with air to ground telephone services. They were unable to ditch the stupid overpriced, very underutilized phones in order to allow a competing communications service on the planes. Immediately after the launch of the inflight connexion services, the air phones suddenly started being pushed for email acccess. Which of course needed a modem and serious knowledge to make work. Not to mention a seriously large bank account to pay for the connection.
If it weren't for the contracts with the air phone carriers, I think the service would have been very viable. My trips have been reduced in lenght recently, going from 6 or so international trips a year to maybe 1, but the number of trips that I fly up and down that West Coast have doubled. And on those flights, which are about 2 and a half to 3 hours, broadband would be a wonderful feature to have on a plane. Based on very non-scientific methods (looking at what people are doing while heading to the back of the plane) I would say that most of the people on those flights are business people, and probably 15 to 20 people working on laptops on each flight. And I'm pretty sure that they would all use the service. I know that I would. Which compared to seeing absolutly nobody using the airphones, makes me think that the broadband would have much more use than the phones ever did.
And everyone who is complaining about needing more power - get another battery. And power isn't the real problem, at least for me. The real problem is being mashed in a seat and not having enough room to use the thing.
Boeing just doesn't see it as a good business investment because airlines don't want to put it on their planes. If you can't sell a product, then why are you in the business of offering it?
In the long run, however, I think they are being a little short sighted. Passengers DO want Internet connectivity even on short flights, its become so engrained in our culture. Like music, movies, and then personal TV on flights, Internet connectivity is the next logical step.
My problem is, don't charge me $500 for the flight, and then expect me to pay $50 an hour for internet service. It could be that most customers lack of interest in internet connectivity is simply because they don't want to have to pay for an additional service when they have already been milked dry buying the fare.
I think what will happen here is Boeing will sell off the division, and then another company will make it work, which I think would be best. Give it 5 years, and EVERY airline will offer Internet access and some CEO at Boeing will have his ass kicked for being short sighted. If you have already spent a billion on it, stick with it and it will pay off eventually.
But it IS a viable service, something that I think anybody with a PDA, Blackberry, Laptop, PSP, Nintendo DS will want to see instead of staring blankly out a small window for 8 hours.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
ANA (All Nippon Airways) have normal plugs built into each seat. power comes on as soon as you're airborne, so does the internet - and guess what, it all works seamlessly. they'll even lend you a LAN cable if you haven't brought your own - and they also have great service. a bit expensive but well worth it if you fly Tokyo - NY.
just FIY.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
I don't know about you, but I would have a hard time playing WoW using a touchpad or trying to mouse on a flip down tray using one of those tiny travel mice. To each his own. This does makes me think, however... airborne LAN party!
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Sometimes I wonder how these top-level execs at companies like Boeing make it to their positions. Can't they see that people *want* WiFi on planes because flying is a *boring* experience?
Companies like Boeing and all the airlines (like American Airlines, et al), should realize that they are in the business of flying people around, not in the ISP business. If they make a buck on WiFi, good for them, but that should not be the motivation to offer WiFi, customer satisfaction should be, an *that* is what makes an airline money.
Just look at JetBlue. They're kicking other airlines' ars for the simple reason that they realize that offering in-flight satellite TV, confortable seats, and good overall customer service is something that costs them peanuts, yet the benefits on customer satisfaction are so great that it brings a lot of customers in.
So long as the airlines keep that "let's take away one olive from the in-flight lunch plate to save ourselves half a cent per customer" the airline business will continue to be a sour experience for all travellers. I think the only reason people flight with such airlines is because they have little choice, as almost all of them offer a bad customer experience.
I would personally use this service on every single flight I take. I am Gold elite on Continental and with the exception of code shares w/ Korean air this service is simply not offered. I would even use this service on 1-2 hour flights. Please do not evaluate the viability of the business model when you don't have any adoption rates! Like the telcos / cable systems you will have to absorb an up front capital roll out cost to get the subscriber base. There are also a lot of other side industries here - WiFi enabled devices besides laptops could benefit as well. Think hand held multi-player gaming consoles. I sincerely hope to be able ot surf the web at 30k feet one day soon!
This is the reason that Boeing will drop this service. Boeing has invested large amounts of money and yes that amount is in the low Billions. They agreed to fund this adventure because the service was supposed to be earning enough money to pay the bills by now, not show profit, just pay costs. The division still requires cash from Boeing to stay alive. The single biggest reason for the service failure is 9/11. Because to this date there has been no major US carrier to sign on for service. They were in talks with US carriers just before 9/11. Once 9/11 hit and the airline industry in the US tanked, they stopped talking to Boeing. That is because it costs about $300,000 a plane to put the service in and no US carrier has decided to pony up that yet. The development costs for the cabin systems was large. They had to build a system that would be secure, self-contained, and would not interfere with current aircraft systems. They had to develop a ground station system to handle the data traffic and allow for hand offs between satellites. Since it costs about $115,000,000 to build and launch a commsat, they had to lease and pay for bandwidth on commercial communications satellites to get the service online. Boeing pays for the satellite time whether it is used or not. They had to pay for the development of an antenna system that would allow for communication to a satellite that is in orbit 22,000 miles above Earth. This antenna would have to guaranty a quality connection no matter how fast nor in what direction the plan was flying. They had to make sure this system meet with the regulations of the FAA, FCC, and other like organizations in the world or it would never be allowed to be used in that airspace.
In normal Boeing fashion, they have tried to show a military use for this system to help pay for the service. To date no major military use has been found. Boeing has built one of the best systems for data service today. It is better than any of there competitors to date. But the up take of the service for aircraft and maritime is too low to continue pouring millions and millions of dollars into it.
February 2006, Flight from Singapore to Frankfurt, Singapore Airlines.
About an hour into the flight I get out my laptop to quickly check my email. Wifi connection is great, browser shows a login page that asks for my credit card number. $29.95 for the whole flight. Well, whatever. Man gönnt sich ja sonst nichts.
I briefly consider using http://thomer.com/howtos/nstx.html [NSTX] and fumble around for a bit, then decide to shell out the dollars because I can't get a connection to my NSTX master. (Later found out it wasn't running since the last reboot, which had happened over a year ago.) I open the browser window again and reload.
The lights go out briefly and come on again. The plane shudders a bit.
The stewardess anounces over the microphone that we are experiencing some turbulences and would everybody please fasten their seat belts and keep the lids on any hot drinks.
I quickly shut down my notebook and put it away.
About five hours and a brief nap later, I try again. Again, I switch on my laptop and within two minutes of running the Wifi connection the plane encounters "turbulences". Again, I give up. Again, no turbulences for the rest of the flight.
The funny bit here is that I was on my way back from a conference about EMC shielding in vehicles.
Jens
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See subject. Just a little side note there.
SIG: HUP
I'm a frequent flyer with Air Canada up until very recently - their frequency and availability of direct flights is much better than any other Canadian airline, but the service has always sucked. Seats are tiny, cramped, domestic flights invariably have the worst movies - there's a reason I stay up overnight before one of those flights, just so I can be unconscious for as much of it as possible.
Then I flew with WestJet a couple months ago, what a difference - I don't think I'll be flying Air Canada again anytime soon. I caught the 24 marathon (go Jack Bauer) on the flight over on the seat-back satellite TV, the seats had a tad more legroom (nothing to write home about, but it was a pleasant change), and the flight attendants were more relaxed and casual and less stuck-up business-like.
I can totally echo the parent: people HATE flying because it's the most boring ordeal EVER, particularly for someone like me who cannot stand vegging out for 20 minutes at a time, let alone 5-6 hours. The PSP was a very tempting buy for this reason alone, but I couldn't justify to myself spending $300 on a contraption that'd be used 3-4 times a year. If the airlines had better movies people would actually want to WATCH, or some other form of entertainment to keep my brain occupied, I'd do a lot to keep flying with them.
Disclaimer: I do not work for WestJet nor do I profit in any way from pimping them in this post.
The service was based on leasing transponders ( around 8mb/s per transponder ), and they reportedly needed 20 to have footprint over the world.
There were loads of other indirects costs too, but like cost was to compensate airlines for fuel burn, certification, 600 staff, multiple Ground earth stations.
Getting the cisco routers and 802.11b onboard was no technical challenge , it was the 30,000ft of rj45,
-- email me @ 30,000 ft
If you don't mind my asking -
What services is your friend using where he gets 100-150ms latencies? I work for a group that is looking to use mobile (city to city) broadband where something like Connexion would be ideal mobilitywise, but latency concerned us. We did our own estimate on what the latencies would be on anything satelite based and the results were much higher than 100-150.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Why would they bother? People are going to want to use Citrix, SSH, ftp, etc. - surely they knew that when they installed it.
+++ATH0
Yeah, I was shock too when he came on line from 30k feet with such low latency - I expected major lag. I really don't know what system was used, although I think it must have been Connexion as it was Lufthansa flight IIRC.
If you are looking into low latency mobilty satillite is typically not a good choice. I don't know if terrestrial networks are possible for you but I would seriously look into WiMax instead. I have had some involvement with it for the last couiple of years and it holds some amazing potentials.
Best wishes on your project
--- Tolerance is the axiomatic "virtue" of those without convictions ---
Eventually one airline will offer Wi-Fi service for free, making it the deciding factor for many people when choosing airlines. It doesn't cost a whole lot for them to offer the service. and if it makes professionals all over choose their airline over all of the competitors it is well worth the investment. Wi-Fi service itself does not have to be fee-based in order for it to be profitable.
/. and whine in your blog about the 6-yr-old spoiled brat who keeps kicking your seat (and post a picture of the cretin that you snapped with your digital camera within seconds of taking it).
Think about it: if you have a laptop, PocketPC, or whatever and know you're going to be suck in a crowded cabin for anywhere from two to seven hours, wouldn't you pay $50 or $100 more for the ticket package in order to book a flight with internet access? Just imagine, you can read
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I tried it in my last pond-hop to the Suse office in Nuremberg, it was rather sweet. It helps pass the long hours of the flight while being semi-productive (ie answering email).
:)
So far I have seen this only on Lufthansa - Boeing needs to get more carriers to install before considering economics. I understand that satellite transceivers aren't cheap, but hey, if there is only one carrier (and only on their wide-body jets) where you can use the service your customer pool is a bit too small!
Power is still an issue, *but* thinkpads last long enough to make it worth the price - and finish up on the tasklist
Technically, the authentication server dropped me a few too many times, annoying (and confusing) as it takes a couple of minutes to re-login. I so not know what you are running these boxes on, but they could use som overhaul (the code to prevent brute-forcing is rather pathetic! get a new apps programmer, please).
For Boeing, the #1 problem is power, as that will stop a lot of people from paying up 30$ for 2 hours (then again, for a lot of those people it is company money coming from their expense budget - do not overestimate pricing)of browsing. Bring jacks to the seats, and you will sell the service, believe me.
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
As for power, I have 220v by the seat. Batteries aren't really a problem here. It isn't that expensive. The only issue is that we need some competition to keep Boeing honest. Perhaps AIrbus can do something if they can get their wiring sorted.
Oh and that isn't any BS, I'm in seat 3H and the Wifi signal is great.
See my journal, I write things there
Another cost to consider!!!!
If every kilogram of extra weight costs a tonne of fuel, and the entire US fleet added the 100 kilos of equipment required, that would be 30,000 gallons of fuel times by 1600 aircraft that is 48,000,000 gallons of fuel per year, CO2 straight into the stratosphere, so you can get wifi?
mmmmmm
Connectivity at any cost?
-- email me @ 30,000 ft
The service was based on leasing transponders ( around 8mb/s per transponder )
8mb/s on a 36Mhz transponder? Nope. You can run a full-duplex T3 (45Mbps) on a 36Mhz transponder using 16QAM modulation. It beats the hell out of the transponder, but it can be done.
Tie the AP into an one of the new 450Kb/s BGAN units from Inmarsat. There's full coverage over Europe and Asia with CONUS coming on line in a month or two and the device is no bigger than a laptop.
I'm glad to see Boeing fail. My first job out of college was for a company called InflightOnline that was doing the same thing. A month after I started, Boeing announced Connexion. One more month, and we were out of business. I'm still paying off the debt I had to rack up while unemployed. Yes I'm bitter.
*Life is too serious to be taken too seriously.*
Sell it to Google and then Google will offer the service for free and charge a premium for advertising on the service...
Sometimes I wonder how these top-level execs at companies like Boeing make it to their positions. Can't they see that people *want* WiFi on planes because flying is a *boring* experience?
boeing isn't an airline and they aren't the ones making the end decision. the airline ceos are - by not putting power connections at each seat and the customers are - by not demanding this service (and power connections at each seat).
if it was up to boeing's ceo, everyone would be using this service and they'd be making big bucks off it!
How nice it would be to frag @ 30K ft. above the ground! At times like these, I wish I had an alienware laptop with built in subwoofer. That way I could pay back the crying little brat in the seat in front of me.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
What scares me is- GPS works fairly well if you're at the window-- so you could easily be transmitting coordinates of the plane with only a 100ms delay to someone on the ground. Send the packets with time-code off of the GPS, and the ground station could figure out exactly where the plane is, regardless of the lag by calculating the averaged speed/time/etc.
With the removal of Selective Availability and 12 channel GPS's w/ WAAS and DGPS, you then have a resonably accurate fix which for someone with the means to launch the right kind of weapon, wouldn't have much of a problem with the lag.
I'm all for people playing their WoW and checking their business mail but a few things about WiFi bug me
1) clickity clickity all over the plane
2) "hey, could you two pick up your laptops and get up so I can use the restroom?"
3) the GPS issue I just mentioned
4) increased cost of already expensive flights- the $30 usage charge can't entirely encompass the costs they incurred setting up the WiFi and the rest of us most definately are paying for it to some degree
and minimally:
5) there is something to be said for the energy usage- whether people are using laptop batteries or the planes fuel (to generate the electricity) - worse if using airline power. Ultimately every power cycle of the battery is one step closer to its demise and disposal and needing a new chemical filled battery housed in dino-based plastics. If using airline power, you're making the turbines work harder and burning more dino-fuel.
personally, Id rather have the seats come with Bose noise cancelling headphones builtin.
Another 'crazy' idea- imagine this:
When you lower the tray table, the seatback in front of you is a screen. Flip over your tray to reveal a keyboard and mouse. The computer in the seat is a thin-client that does RDP, and has a builtin webbrowser or somesuch for people without a machine to remote into. You give it a ground IP to connect to and you're good to go.
This wouldn't take care of everyone, but would eliminate all but two items from my nuisances list- though obviously would cost more. Perhaps the next generation airplane could do something like this? Business people could get their work done, be able to get up in a hurry (for bathroom, emergency, whatever) just by flipping their tray back up, and would eliminate the possibility of your laptop getting crushed when the guy in front of you puts his seat back, reduce RSI from typing in wierd positions, etc etc..
Crazy right? Once upon a time, people thought flying was crazy too.
I'm far from a physicist or a mechanical engineer, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that electricity usage does not tax jet engines. It was my understanding that the engine uses all of its fuel to keep the jet in the air, and gobs and gobs of electricity are pretty much a side benefit of having mechanical parts already moving, so you just slap on some magnets or something and drain off the power. That's why many of the large emergency generators you see in disaster situations are little more than jet engines strapped to flat-bed trailers.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I used Skype on a flight somewhere over Siberia (on Lufthansa's Frankfurt-Osaka route). It worked fine, with quite tolerable latency.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I had a friend who though the same thing reguarding his car. He figured replacing his belt driven water pump with an electric one powered by the alternator would save him the horse power needed to drive the original pump because power taken from the alternator was "free".
Unfortunately, it does not work that way. Placing a load on a generator or alternator makes it more difficult to turn and there are real forces involved. In the case of a plane, the power taken by 100 passangers using 75 watts each for a total of 7500 watts is tiny compaired to the output of a jet engine which is going to be rated in thousands of kilowatts.
Designing a system such that no possible fault on the passanger power bus can affect the rest of the aircraft is not particularly difficult.
you don't get free power from strapping on magnets. Generators cause a magnetic drag.
Unfortunately then the battery ran out, and that's the real problem. If in-seat power is impractical, I wonder if airlines could hire out battery power packs instead...
BGAN is great but at $6.95 retail per MB.
That is a "real" business model.
-- email me @ 30,000 ft
??????
jet engines strapped to flat-bed trailers.
Is this for real? That sounds like it could be a disaster, if the trailer decides to take off
Cell Phones can easily work on planes (though it's not allowed). Despite the fact the plane is 30,000 feet in the air, radiowaves can travel extremily long distances if nothing is in the way. Infact, sometimes cell phones work too well (capture too many cellphone towers all at once). Wireless Internet, therefore, can easily be achieved. But Wifi acess points will take another few years before they start to appear all over the world. I think it may take them time to figure any remaining problems out - such as lack of wifi access points, but many passangers would be more than willing to pay when it is availible - Already a significant amount use theirs laptops during flight.
its not as bad as you might think (playing with the touchpad, not on a plane). I wouldn't run the core doing it, but for just farming or anything, its doable. especially if you have your hotkeys set up well.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
I worked with Boeing Connexion on some of this stuff and even though I am no longer employed by anyone remotley associated with this I'd rather post anonymously.
1. The main Boeing guys hated the Connexion guys, they were in a completely seperate group did their own thing in their own building and for the most part were much faster with getting things rolled out, this made the old timers at Boeing look bad.
2. No one has mentioned the ground stations, but Connexion had ground stations all over the world to manage the wireless connections. Basically you went from the plane to a satellite to a ground station, europe and US were fine but imagine managing a huge data center in China or Russia. The import taxes alone were huge as were the maintenance fees. And anytime they wanted to change or upgrade anything they had to do it all over the world. Don't even mention managine the security of the servers and who got to manage them. The mix of Unix and Windows didn't help this.
3. Too expensive to install, every airplane they wanted to install this had to be taken out of circulation for a while to get the whole thing installed, it cost a lot of money to take a 747 out of its regular route. To top it off I think the installation had to be done in Seattle (not sure about this last part).
But their stuff works, on a side note their first client was the US government. AirForce One was one of the first planes they wired but apparently upgrading it was a bitch. I guess you don't just show up for a new rev of code for that plane.
http://www.collude.biz - Ignore this, it's for Project Honey Pot.
The type of weapon that can hit an object moving at 600 miles an hour 7 miles above the surface has much better tracking than a consumer level GPS relaying information via a laptop over a satellite internet connection.
I've done this with both a Dell and Acer laptop a couple of times I've had the seat plug -- the laptop was in "charging" mode and the battery would go down very slowly... on a 3 hour flight maybe 10-15%.
-Stu
exactly, but you still have to point it in the right direction
If you take the time to examine how a turbojet works, you will see that it's not much different from a turbine, except instead of using the exhaust to drive the jet forward, you catch all that energy in a larger turbine and have it drive a shaft to spin an electric generator. It's quite impossible for it to take off.
I was in an SG airline plane (night flight) and they were offering the wifi connection... How angry I was after 10 hours... The guy next to me kept "working", IMing, emailing instead of sleeping.
;)
I understand now why girls hate geeks!