Boeing Scraps In-flight Internet Access

Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the BBC, Boeing has recently announced that it has abandoned Connexion, its in-flight broadband service. Said Boeing CEO Jim McNerney: 'Regrettably, the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected. We believe this decision best balances the long-term interests of all parties with a stake in Connexion by Boeing.'"

Comments

Not a problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as we won't be able to take our laptops or other gadgets on board aircraft for much longer.

Re:Not a problem...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Look on the bright side - laptops & gadgets are pretty ineffective against snakes anyway (unless you open the laptop flat & use it as a bite shield, I suppose). A pillow or blanket would make a more agile of an implement, IMO.

Well DUH

[abscissa]

If you can't bring your laptop on the flight, what did they expect!!? Psy Internet?.... Good going guys!! There is also no market for golf lessons on the flight either.

Re:Well DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

The restrictions on flights have been lifted, and have for days. Laptops along with everything else are perfectly fine.

The only restriction is on drinks and liquids not purchased within the terminal.

Re:Well DUH

[morie]

Just bring some liquid fuel cell fuel...

Oh, wait..

Re:Well DUH

[hey!]

If you can't bring your laptop on the flight, what did they expect!!?

If this happens, then JetBlue will probably build a keyboard into the seat tray. Maybe you'd VPN into your corporate network.

Enough ubiquitous Internet and terminal access and you end up with laptops and PDAs being obsolete.

Re:Well DUH

[Ctrl-Alt-Del]

It's not really practical to use a laptop on a plane, unless you're in business/first class; firstly due to the lack of space to actually get it out, and secondly, few airlines provide power to economy class seats.

Re:Well DUH

[MECC]

If this happens, then JetBlue will probably build a keyboard into the seat tray.

Wow - that seems like a big investment to get people to flock to your airline. I'd think free booze might cost about the same, and people (everyone I know) would definetly fly such an airline. Plus, it would be easier to spot terrorists - they'd be the sober ones.

Re:Well DUH

[bangenge]

does that include dell laptops?

Re:Well DUH

[hey!]

hI'd think free booze might cost about the same, and people (everyone I know) would definetly fly such an airline.

Ah, this harkens back to the days when "Jet Set" implied a sybaritic life of privilege and pleasure, not an endless grid of boarding and trying catch a few winks of sleep on red eyes. Back in the day before laptops, you took a book on a flight just in case your seatmate was a bore (if you were a bore that was his or hopefully, her problem).

However, it is almost certainly not the case that free booze would be cheaper than keyboards. Booze remains one of the most expensive things that is routinely served. Just ask the casinos, who increasingly have sensors on booze bottles that wire the manager when the bartender is poring long shots. Furthermore, the keyboards are capital expenses, the booze is an operating expense. Over a few dozen flights, you'd have spent a lot more money on booze than on keyboards, if they were installed when the plane was outfitted, not retrofitted.

Re:Well DUH

[mistered]

You know what they say about making assumptions... As someone who actually used the service, I can assure you it wasn't "$3/minute or more." In fact, I paid around $30 for a transatlantic flight -- which isn't cheap compared to normal wifi access points, but is reasonable in my opinion.

Re:Well DUH

[saskboy]

New Air Canada seats have a TV and USB port in the back. They haven't "implemented" use of the USB ports yet, but I suspect they will be for keyboards with trackballs, for Internet/email access.

where's the market

[annakin]

As evidenced by Sept. 11's Flight 93, cell phones work perfectly well at high altitudes. So as the broadband capability of these phones increases, it's obvious that dedicated services such as Connexion are targeting a redundant market.

Re:where's the market

[Ponzicar]

So the government convincingly faked every single call made by the passengers to their friends and families? Not a single one of them realized it wasn't really who they thought it was?

Re:where's the market

[Andy Dodd]

False. Cell phones DO work at high altitudes. High altitudes gives them good LOS to multiple cell towers.

What IS true and a scientifically proven fact is that cell phones at high altitudes create unusually high loads on the cellular network. See what I said earlier about good LOS to *multiple* towers? The end result is that instead of appearing as a user on one tower on a given frequency and nowhere else, it appears as a user or a strong interferer on many towers.

The end result is that while a cell network may have the capacity to server N users on the ground per cell, it can only support a total of around N users in the air for ALL cells within LOS of the aircraft. This is why the ban on airborne cell phones was originally an FCC rule, not an FAA one.

Re:where's the market

[daranz]

Cellphones don't work when you're over the middle of an ocean. Satellites, on the other hand, can. Plus, I suspect it's easier to use a satellite connection for live TV, than to try and and pipe it over a cellphone network.

Besides, if you're flying over multiple countries, you need to get on several different cellphone networks, which means having to sign contracts with multiple providers if you wanna connect the entire plane, or having to worry about huge roaming charges. Not to mention cellphones don't work everywhere over land either, and in some regions, networks might be incapable of handling anything besides voice traffic.

Connexion probably didn't take off (pun intended) because of the costs invovled. You could pay for a landline connection for a month with what you had to pay for an entire flight of Internet access

Re:where's the market

[canuck57]

...cell phones work perfectly well at high altitudes..

They do. It is a common misconception that the authorities want cell phones off in flight because of safety. The reason is simple, because the plane is travelling so fast, and the ground system is more or less designed for automobile speeds, the cell system hands off to the next cell very rapidly causing grief for the cell system owners.

It likely will not work when over an unpopulated area, but near cities and main hiways it should. This isn't to say the connection will be stable, it likely will not be. 9/11 worked because they were in a populated area flying relatively low.

Re:where's the market

[smchris]

The self-professed liberal radio commentator Ed Schultz is a pilot. He says he uses his cell phone while flying all the time and the guy who is spreading the rumor that they don't work on planes as part of a conspiracy theory is an idiot.

Re:where's the market

[farenka]

Cellular Phones doesn't work at high altitude, at least not in Italy an not on GSM service. A friend of mine worked for Alitalia as a technician and sometimes he flyed on short test flights from Fiumicino Airport (on Boing and Airbus airplanes). Just take off, few minutes around, and landing. He usually go around on the plane to do some checks and there are no flight attendents at all. So one time he didn't turned off his phone just to see what happens. The phone was connected to the network during the take off, but in few minutes he lost the signal at all.

Re:where's the market

[hughk]

I guess he is a GA pilot. Somewhat different circumstances, you are in a slower plane, you fly lower and there isn't so much fuselage around you, especially in the cockpit.

Inside a typical commercial jet, you fly at about 30K feet, the RF has to find its way out through the portholes so the mobile's transmitter automatically ramps up to maximum. You have line of sight to the ground stations but at full cruising altitude, they have antennas tweaked to send out mostly sideways.

It will work, but not very well and you will cause system problems on the ground.

Re:where's the market

[Matje]

yes but they researched it and it turns out to be bonk. There is no safety risk involved with calling from the airplane. That's why both in the EU and US the flight authorities are debating whether to allow GSM calls from the airplane. This was reported in the NY times a while ago.

Re:where's the market

[Andy Dodd]

Was he near a window or not?

Keep in mind that the metal fuselage of the aircraft provides quite a bit of RF shielding and radiation pattern distortion, I would not be surprised if you could use a cell phone near a window but not from an aisle.

It's a fact that people HAVE used cell phones on airplanes before, and back in the old AMPS analog days, the problem of hitting multiple cells was much worse. Not only did it cause interference problems at the additional cells, it often cause people to be billed multiple times for the same call and other such oddities because the network was designed with the assumption that a phone could NEVER be heard from a distance greater than a certain amount.

In the case of GSM, there is an inherent limit on the distance of a phone from a tower, I forget the exact limit. It could potentially cause GSM phones to completely fail above a certain altitiude, but you only need 1000-2000 feet of altitude (extremely low for an airliner) for the assumptions used in designing cellular networks to all go out the window.

Re:where's the market

[SnowZero]

And it is a scientifically proven FACT that GAY people do not use their LAST NAME!

Now back to reality: The stress of being in a hostage situation might make people act a wee-bit differently, and one person who thinks "it was not my son" doesn't explain the other 15 or so people who *did* hear from their loved ones. 14 out of 15 witnesses would be enough do get you convicted of most crimes, especially when the 15th is unsure more than they have any proof. The government could not possibly pull off a stunt of this magnitude without someone leaking the story to the New York Times. You can't even cover up a minor robbery (Watergate).

But go ahead, go watch Loose Change 45 more times and make yourself feel better. Don't forget to use generic brand aluminum foil for your tinfoil hat, as the major brands have alread been corrupted by the government and now contain nano-circuits to boost the government radio signals.

Re:where's the market

[Fnkmaster]

The people who spout off on Slashdot about how it's impossible have clearly never tried it. I can empirically tell you that GSM phones work at even 10-15 thousand feet of altitude, having done so myself on a private jet flight where there is nobody to enforce the absurd restrictions on commercial flights. They don't work *well*, but it is possible to get through a quick voice call for a minute or so, or to get data access for long enough for your Treo or Blackberry to suck down chunks of email here and there.

However, at cruising altitude for private jet flights, usually in the 33-35k feet range (private jets tend to cruise at higher altitudes than commercial flights), GSM service is not so good. I don't recall off the top of my head successfully getting through any calls or meaningful amounts of data at that altitude, though you *will* sometimes still see evidence of your phone picking up a GSM cell site from the ground, so there's at least some one way transmission. Doesn't mean it's impossible, of course, just means that I don't recall doing it.

I've also only been lucky enough to fly on a private jet a small handful of times, not something I do on a regular enough basis to have thought about doing extensive experimentation.

Re:where's the market

[houghi]

They do. It is a common misconception that the authorities want cell phones off in flight because of safety.

Yet that is what is being told all the time by the airlines. The same lame excuse is often used in hospitals.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627970/
Quote: there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests battery-operated devices, [...] might disrupt critical aircraft navigation systems.

OTOH I don't mind the ban of cellphones on an airplane. Can you imagine trying to sleep and having some 'businessman' calling all the time? I have seen people with TWO cellphones calling till the airplane door. I can not imagine the horror sitting near that person.

Or sitting next to some younger person calling his haXor friend.
You can tell where I am? Cewl. Where am I now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? And now? Oh, lost you there, hello? Where am I now? And now? ...

abandoned because of security issues?

[haestan]

I'm not sure if the reason isn't because of security issues. Which public airline wants their passengers to use notebooks during the flight in the times of exploding battery packs and terrorist attacks. Now as there is no mainstream market their Connexion system they abandon it because it's too expensive to carry on just for a small market of private airline carriers.

pricing

[pr0nbot]

Pricing seems to have been not unreasonable

http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/index.cfm?p=cbb.p ricing&lang=en

Internet Flight
Get flat-rate access for your entire flight.

$26.95 for entire flight, including connecting flights within 24 hours of signing in.*

Internet Time
Get 1, 2, or 3 hours of access. Internet Time begins when you sign in and counts down whether you are signed in or not.
Access Price
1 hour $9.95
2 hours $14.95
3 hours $17.95

*Price shown in US dollars. No taxes or duties will be added. Prices are reduced during maintenance periods.

Re:pricing

[frisket]

I think they were overoptimistic at that price. There isn't a "market" for this service: rightly or wrongly, people expect it to be free of charge, like a seat, or in-flight meals on long-haul.

Re:pricing

[interiot]

I'm not so sure... Previously, the only way to communicate with anyone on a 14 hour flight was voice calls which are quite expensive as well. At least this way business travellers could get some extra work done, and not be completely out of touch with the world for a whole 14-hour period. Even hotels charge you for internet access (especially business-oriented ones).

Re:pricing

[l0ungeb0y]

Yeah... 27$ for a few hour flight is so ultra cheap.
Considering that most people pay about that much at home for a MONTH of broadband
I'd say pricing was a major sticking point and contributed in no small part to the demise of the service pilot.

Re:pricing

[VoiceOfSanity]

Understand that Connexion was primarily used by long haul (read overseas) airlines. Companies such as Luftansa provided the service for use on many of their flights. The problem was that almost every US airline company did not want to provide the service, even on coast to coast flights. It was a very hard sell, considering that there was (and still is) a very hard push to get cellphone usage approved for use in flight. Why use a guaranteed connection through Connexion when you could simply fire up your wireless adapter from Sprint and hope that you can get a decent enough connection while flying over western Texas, or the Rockies?

Cost certainly was another reason why it wasn't more widely used, but that excuse doesn't fly (pardon the pun) when you consider most corporate flyers are running on expense accounts, and certainly the cost of connecting up can be covered by those accounts. After all, go to Las Vegas and try to find a free wi-fi spot along the Strip, or stay in the hotel and use their Internet services. You'll pay $9.95 a day (or $49.95 a week) for access (and most places are through the television, not wireless). Yes, I know Las Vegas has a wi-fi grid being developed (such as the free access at the airport), but where the hotels are, they have worked hard to keep those free services from being available to the public.

Re:pricing

[interiot]

... which is why I added "especially for business travellers". Some mainstream business-oriented hotels charge as high as $20/day for internet+VPN.

Re:pricing

[DrXym]

Hmm, perhaps the US model is different so I'll refer to GSM. Most likely your plane would be kitted out with a picocell and jammers to ensure you didn't inadvertantly connect to another service. To use your phone, you'd have to "roam" through the picocell and then be raped at whatever phone rate they chose for you to make and receive calls. You'd probably be looking at least 1 euro a minute, and probably more. Other services like texting would also be high.

On the plus side, your phone would be so close to the cell that it would use less power.

Re:pricing

[Achromatic1978]

Most home broadband services are not capable of providing broadband internet access 33,000 ft above the Atlantic Ocean.

And for a few hour flight, yeah, it does add up a bit. But when I fly from Melbourne to Glasgow, 9 hours to Hong Kong, 13 hours to London, and 90 minutes to Glasgow, it ends up costing about a dollar an hour.

Re:pricing

[Chaffar]

A more intelligent thing to do would be to add 5$ surcharge per ticket on business/first class tickets and then propose FREE UNLIMITED BROADBAND CONNECTION on flights. They're paying shitloads of money for those tickets anyway, so the surcharge would pass unnoticed, allowing the company to one-up other airlines in terms of service :)

Oh yeah, I forgot 4- Profit !!

Re:pricing

[rikkards]

And in some cases all you get is Web access and no vpn due to proxy config (Westin in Calgary for example)

Re:pricing

[BenjyD]

By way of comparison, BT Openzone (UK wireless hotspot provider) charges £0.20/minute ($22/hr) for its pay as you go wireless connections in places like train stations etc. There are various voucher options, the equivalent to the "entire flight" option is around $20.

So, compared to that, the prices aren't that bad.

Re:pricing

[morie]

Yeah... 27$ for a few hour flight is so ultra cheap.
Considering that most people pay about that much at home for a MONTH of broadband

And what about flight itself! It is so expensive! I can ride my bike for three hours almost for free, but for a flight I have to pay hundreds of euros. Why would anyone want that?

Re:pricing

[westlake]

They're paying shitloads of money for those tickets anyway,

The airlines aren't making shitloads of money these days and the infrastructure for sattelite broadband is expensive. It isn't difficult to imagine a more or less permanent ban on carry-on laptops on the northeast coriddor and North Atlantic runs.

I think the real reason was money.

[jskline]

I think the real reason for their canning this was that they couldn't find the market for charging $50 for 5 minutes of broadband time on the flights!

You have to remember that anything in or around an airport costs as much as 2000 times its actual value. What made you think they wouldn't try this with broadband?

Re:Well duh....

[DrXym]

Terrorists can coordinate their attacks using something called a wristwatch. Perhaps these should be banned from flights too.

No!

[The One and Only]

Who will I email for help when deadly snakes are released on my flight?

Shhh...Re:Well duh....

[freedom_india]

There ya go...Quoting Joe Tribiani: "Don't put ideas into his head."...Now watch as another "cell" is taken down, another RED alert issues and watches, shoes, sun glasses, toothbrushes, etc., are banned...

Next they will ban passengers from flights.

Homeland.Sec: "People are responsible for causing all these crashes. After exhaustive investigation by FAA, we have concluded that presence of passengers on flights is 100% responsible for all these h1jackings. Henceforth, all passengers are banned from flights until further notice."
Oh and the $212 you paid for the flight ticket is NOT refundable.

Watch as this becomes a reality in 2007 once the Rep. party wins a thumping majority this year in Congress/Senate.

Insert Plane and/or Snake joke here.

[ettlz]

Honestly, you'd think the editors would be wiser than to post this story on today of all days, when Snakes on a Plane goes on general release. (Slashdot story yet?!) Maybe they were concerned about security --- trying to avoid worms on a plane and all that.

Health Issues

[owlnation]

Using a cell phone on a plane would be incredibly dangerous to your health.

If you were sitting near me on a plane spouting corporate buzzwords or telling your hard of hearing relatives that "...yes! We're on the plane...", for hours on end, and if I have to hear the latest (and always truly inane and über-irritating) ring tone over and over, then trust me, you would be in terrible terrible terrible danger...

Hich costs

[AndyCap]

Of course, it does sound like the costs were out of control if they had 560 people working in what's a very small ISP.

Flight times

[Mr_Silver]

Speaking personally, if i'm on a flight under 3 hours then by the time you've gone up, had a drink and got your food out of the way, you're getting ready to land again.

Flights that are 4-5 hours, I usually watch the film, read the book or (if i'm really inclined to do some work) I'll fire up my laptop and work on something offline.

Flights that are over 5 hours, I'll generally try and catch some sleep so that I'm refreshed when I get there.

As such, there is only small chance that i'll even think about using a laptop and, even then, the requirement for internet is limited. It doesn't surprise me that this venture is not particually sucessful.

pricing versus performance

[daw]

Those prices might be bearable if the service worked. The real problem was that it didn't. I used it on Lufthansa. It was the worst laggy modem-speed mess, totally unusable. If you're paying by the hour for something, it's pretty infuriating when it stops working completely for five minutes at a time.

I suspect the real reason they weren't doing business was because of the performance, not the price.

imagine that

[v1]

the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected.

Translation: not nearly as many people are willing to get jacked for $35/hr for internet access as we had believed.

Though on a completely different angle, at the rate things are going now, soon we won't be able to get on a plane with anything short of our underwear, and will have to fed-ex our luggage to our destination. What happened to the good 'ol days when the people were more scared of the public than the government was?

The real reason this won't fly

[Inode Jones]

The real reason? I couldn't use it very well even if I wanted to pay.

Given how US airlines pack you in like sardines, I can't open up my notebook larger than 60 degrees. That's not enough to see the display properly. The last thing I'm gonna do in this configuration is connect to the Internet.

I hope Lufthansa will take over this service

[papaia]

During my trips to/from Europe, from/to the US, I always enjoyed this service on Lufthansa's airplanes. I wish they could keep it available, alongside allowance for laptops.

A common misconception

[kahei]

Cellphones, of course, don't work on flights as a general rule. They only work on flights THAT PASS OVER LOTS OF CELL PHONE CELLS. The Pacific, the Gobi, the Sahara, and Greenland are all good examples of places not rich in cell phone cells.

Of course, if by 'plane travel' you unconsciously mean 'plane travel within the continental United States', then sure, you can just use your cell phone.

What were they charging? $5/minute or something?

[gelfling]

Airlines love to advertise services like this or phones on planes when they first came out and then you discover that it's only slightly less expensive than a heroin habit. This is why airlines are winding down in flight phones - not because of cell phones or security but instead after the first few years of some yahoo calling "Woo Hoo guess what Cleetus I'm callin ya from tha plane!!!!!" the charm of a $40 phone call wears off.

FedEx it all

[maggard]

...

will have to fed-ex our luggage to our destination.

Actually, I've been doing that for over a decade.

I used to oversee nationial rollouts of systems, which meant I was on the road 95% of the time, often spending only a day or two in each site before moving on. I had enough to worry about without babysitting a suitcase which may or may not arrive on my flight, but was on the road long enough and in different enough climates every week that a roll-on wasn't sufficient.

Enter FedEx.

Every few weeks I'd pack up a load of freshly cleaned/laundered clothes and send them to my major destinations over the next month. Coats & thick socks to cold places, extra shirts & undershirts to hot ones, replacement underwear, etc. I'd put each cache in a cheap collapsable nylon duffel, then into the office for shipping to jobsites with strict instructions to hold for my arrival (there were usually a couple of other boxes full of gear)

Sure I had to pop by a store every so often, but at least I wasn't inconveniently buying a couple of new dress shirts at top dollar every week, and these were already laundered, pressed, etc. Plus when you're from out of town finding a store that sells decent dress shirts or whatever, getting to it, etc. is just another hassle one can do without. My concerns were the job, finding my way back to tonight's hotel, getting fed decently, and getting to the airport; not haberdashery.

Even if I'm paying I still often ship clothes ahead. It is a small expense compared to much of the trip, and frankly skipping the joy of dragging the suitcase to the airport, then the thrill of the lugguage carrousel at the other end (wheel... of... mangled... lugguage! Did mine arrive today or is it on it's way to Guam? Let's wait an hour surrounded by annoying people to find out!), makes it worth every penny. Check in to my hotel, have them send the box to my room, ahh, properly packed clothes, nothing crushed, all ready for wearing during my stay.

Seriously, career advice? Show up every day looking neat & fresh when everyone else is rumpled and worn. Especially true with suits, they can only be worn so many days in a row before getting nasty, no matter how often they're sent out for overnight abuse at outragous rates by the hotel dryclean service. Shipping costs are just a sound investment then.

It wasn't the expense to the consumer...

[raehl]

The airlines needed to spend hundreds of thousands per plane to install connexion, something financially strapped airlines wern't exactly clamoring to do.