Why In-Flight Wi-Fi Is Still Slow and Expensive

An anonymous reader writes: Let's grant that having access to the internet while on an airplane is pretty amazing. When airlines first began offering it several years ago, it was agonizingly slow and somewhat pricey as well. Unfortunately, it's only gotten more expensive over the years, and the speeds are still frustrating. This is in part because the main provider of in-flight internet, Gogo, knows most of its regular customers will pay for it, regardless of cost. Business travelers with expense accounts don't care if it's $1 or $10 or $50 — they need to stay connected. Data speeds haven't improved because Gogo says the scale isn't big enough to do much infrastructure investment, and most of the hardware is custom-made. A third of Gogo-equipped planes can manage 10 Mbps, while the rest top out at 3 Mbps. There's hope on the horizon — the company says a new satellite service should enable 70 Mbps per plane by the end of the year — but who knows how much they'll charge for an actual useful connection.

Comments

Problem with the solution?

[shortscruffydave]

70 Mbps per plane sounds good on the face of it, but if that's being delivered via satellite then I would expect that latency becomes much more of an issue. Is this just replacing one problem with another?

Re:Problem with the solution?

[lexman098]

Jesus, what company do you work for that makes you debug sims on a plane? I can barely manage it at home.

Re:Problem with the solution?

[edtice1559]

I see your point. But I don't think your scenario is really what one thinks of when it comes to a "business traveler." When I think of business travelers needing to stay connected, I envision a major client calling in upset about something and they better get a reassuring email quickly or all hell will break loose. WiFi today could meet your needs, though, with a little planning. There are a lot of good mobility solutions out there that let you synchronize documents locally (and support things like remote wipe should a device be lost or stolen). Also VNC is terribly inefficient with the netowork. The Windows RDP client is really wonderful in that it uses almost no bandwidth (2400 baud model is more than enough.) If accessing Linux machines, I think that NoMachine is the best choice. VNC sends giant raster images continuously and will never be satisfied regardless of how much bandwidth you have.

Am I the only person...

[Viol8]

... who still thinks being able to get a wireless internet link in an aircraft doing 600mph at 35K feet is pretty fucking amazing. I can't believe people complain about the bandwidth - they should be grateful this tech exists at all.

Latency not a deal breaker

[Comboman]

Latency is only really an issue with certain applications like on-line gaming or VOIP. For web browsing, file downloading, even video/audio streaming, latency isn't a big deal.

Because Everything To Do With Air Travel...

[LaurenCates]

...is slow and expensive?

I'm sure I'm not the first person in the world to have come up with the idea of putting a Dollar Store in an airport. Since I've never owned or operated a retail outlet of any kind, though, I can imagine there's some sort of prohibition to the idea that I haven't thought of yet. But by and large, the reason we don't see this is it would probably piss in someone's corn flakes that someone, in some airport somewhere, would get something for cheap.