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U.S. Airlines to Offer In-Air Wi-Fi
"Within the next year, US Airlines are going to be offering Wi-Fi service onboard flights. VoiP calls will be banned initially, but the article mentions that lifting the ban on cellphones may still be a possibility. 'AirCell will install equipment on airliners that will act as a WiFi hotspot in the cabin and connect to laptop computers and devices like BlackBerrys that have WiFi chips. In all, it will cost about $100,000 to outfit a plane with less than 100 pounds of equipment, and the work can be done overnight by airline maintenance workers, AirCell says. What makes the service particularly attractive to airlines is that they will share revenue with AirCell. The service will cost about the same as existing WiFi offerings. Mr. Blumenstein says it will charge no more than $10 a day to passengers. It will also offer discounted options for customers and tie into existing service programs like T-Mobile, iPass and Boingo. Speeds will be equivalent to WiFi service on the ground.'"
I hope phone calls stay banned. Airline flights are bad enough without having to listen to one side of a hundred phone conversations.
Maybe you should try a bit harder to pick your flights & airlines. American Airlines has seat power on all of its airplanes.
This should help:
http://www.seatguru.com/
FunOne
Imagine a 5 hour cross country flight, sitting next to some idiot yapping at the top of his voice on his cell phone. That after having to strip down, empty your bags, and submit to a body cavity search just to get through security. That cross country road trip is sounding better and better every day...
Playing counter-strike will now be even more realistic. Imagine the kids screaming "haha, I'm going to blow this plane, you faggots!!!11" inside the plane. And the real CT squad goes berserker and pull their weapons. Pure pwnage!
Use VoIP now. Just tunnel it through SSH or some other protocol. I hate people talking on the phone as much as the next guy, but I'd make a call just to spite them.
Didn't you hear? VoIP packets interfere with the navigation of the plane. Do you want to kill us all, you fool?
Why does it cost 100 grand for a plane?
-- lol pwned
100,000 x 4500 = $450,000,000 (You had one too many zeros)
A simpler way to look at it, however: 6% interest on $100,000 is about $20 per day. If you depreciate the equipment over 5 years, that adds another $60 or so per day. If you figure that the average user will take about 2 flights in a day, you earn about $5 per user per flight. Your average airplane makes about 10 flights in a day giving you a potential customer base of 200 x 10 = 2000. You only need to sell to about 16 of those to pay for the capital costs. If you think you're going to get a higher attach rate than that (and I think you are), this is worth doing. Put in intangibles such as product differentiation and customer loyalty and you're far ahead of your costs.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Phones should always be banned on a plane. I can't think of anything more annoying than listening to dozens of conversations going on around me while I try to sleep.
"Hi Mom!"
...
"No, the plane just took off"
...
"Well, it was all right, but our flight out of Amsterdam was delayed. I have NEVER seen an airport backed up like that before"
...
"All-in-all, the trip was OK, but I am SO GLAD it is over"
...
"Well, for one, Linette was SUCH a B-I-T-C-H for this ENTIRE trip. I was so happy when she caught her connecting flight at JFK."
...
"Well, she used to be so nice, but, ever since her an Darren broke up, it has been a nightmare"
...
"He cheated on her!
...
"I KNOW! And he seemed to be so nice"
...
"He slept with NICOLE, of all people"
I beg the powers-that-be to never, ever allow the use of cell phones on a plane. It will be enough for many of us to slit our wrists.
I have a hard time believing that. If a WiMAX connection messed up airline naviagtion, the towers on the ground would be screwing them up whether a device was on the plane or not. Now, I know that they are not a definitive source of info, but the Mythbusters episode where they tried to interfere with an planes instruments with cell phones and other radio equipment, they showed that it is just not going to happen. They had to do some pretty serious work to get the plane's equipment to a state that it could be affected by non-intentional interference. Look at it this way. If you could crash an airplane by hitting it with consumer level radio waves, don't you think we would be seeing a lot more planes going down? Why take a shoe bomb on a plane. Just turn on a battery operated radio transmitter.
A few months ago we were driving up I-5 in California.
We were stuck in a traffic jam on the road, a good 20 miles from the nearest town. I pulled out my laptop to scan for wireless signals, and see exactly how 'isolated' this area was.
Surprisingly, I found several Access Points with names like 'JetBlue1203' and 'JetBlue1609'. These signals would start at low-strength, the signal would grow stronger, peak for about 5 minutes, and then drop off in strength--- almost as if they were coming from an Airplane overhead.
I suppose these AP's could have come from some other car on the road; but people generally don't run Access Points in their Car.
Traffic was at a standstill--- if the signal was coming from a nearby house or from a car on our side of the road; I would expect the signal to remain level for a longer period of time.
If the signal was coming from a car on the opposite side of the road, I would expect the signal quality to rise and fall quickly. In fact, I could detect a number of 'Ad-Hoc' wireless signals from some misconfigured Laptops-- those signals would zoom by pretty quickly (other side of the road), or remain stable (My side of the road).
I never investigated these further, but I always assumed these 'JetBlue####' Access Points were from JetBlue Airplanes, and I was lucky enough to be within line-of-sight of these signals. The airplanes were a few miles above us, which seems pretty distant for a Wifi signal... But still these Access Points had names like 'JetBlue'. What the heck were they?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I can't believe they are going to let people talk to each other on planes. Just think how bad it is going to be when you hear both sides of the conversation.
That will be twice as much chatter!!!!
I'm thinking about the 5 hour cross country flight, sitting next to the the ass that is either so stupid that he can't figure out that a $.50 pair of ear plugs would solve his problems,
Game theory, buddy. You making your incessant inane calls gives you slight benefit while annoying the hell out of about 100 people around you. Thus, not worth it. If everyone talks constantly on their phones during a long flight it's worse for everyone.
or is so self centered that he thinks everybody else should modify their behavior in public places because trying to force his desired behavior on everyone else
It seems to be the desired behavior of the masses - I've never seen anyone who enjoyed listening to a cacophony of cell calls - so that's democracy for you. Forcing societal norms on assholes since 1776.
seems like a better idea than putting in a $.50 pair of ear plugs.
Sure does, that's not particularly comfortable. I don't want to have to stick shit in my ears for 5 hours because you can't shut the **** up for 10 consecutive minutes.
You're not so damned important that you can't wait until you get on the ground. In the rare case that someone is, their company will reimburse them for the exorbitant back-of-the-seat phone.
I just wish that airlines would start offering free ear plugs, so we could all stop listening to the incessant whining of a bunch of intellectually challenged self centered ass holes.
The self-centered one is the dipshit who thinks his desires are more important than those of the 100 people around him. That would be you.
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.