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?

[edtice1559]

I don't think that would be a problem at all for business users. In fact there is actually plenty of bandwidth on the plane for us. All we want is to be able to send and receive *text* email reliably. The issue with WiFi on planes is that people want to do things like stream Youtube and this eats up all of the bandwidth. Really what is needed is a traffic prioritization solution. I think, however, that the summary is wrong in terms of caring about cost. I don't think that too many employers actually pay for the WiFi on planes. I don't think I've ever purchased it. I mostly use it on Southwest where it is free. (For A-List Preferred flyers)

Re:Problem with the solution?

[Austerity Empowers]

Well no, even when travelling on business all my docs are on a web-server, often with images. Also, VNC is an essential part of my job, in that I cannot run the sims on a puny IT issued laptop, and need my desktop or datacenter to see waves and do any form of debug. But wifi as it exists makes this painful.

Certainly youtube/netflix/etc. would be nice, but at this point the I'd consider mail, web and vnc as "essential".

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?

[jeremyp]

Maybe he means "play the Sims" and debug something else.

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.

Re:Problem with the solution?

[hawguy]

One would think that latency is much less of an issue when you are 9 km closer to the satellite, with nothing obstructing the Fresnel zone.

When the satellite is somewhere between 750km (for LEO) to 40,000km (for Geosynchronous), 9km doesn't make much difference.

Re:Problem with the solution?

[TheRaven64]

United has started to roll out something like this (they keep telling me about it, while apologising for the fact that it isn't yet in the planes that I happen to be in at the time), where you can stream the video content to your laptop / tablet / phone, rather than watch on the crappy screen on the back of the seat. It's not terrible well thought through, because they don't provide a little slot on the back of the seat to hold the tablet for you, so you have to balance it on the tray table, which they then put food on. I don't know how much they pay for the in-flight entertainment now, but I bet Netflix could undercut them (especially if they provided a limited catalogue to everyone and a less limited catalogue to their customers. One interesting option would be for Netflix customers to indicate their flight number and select things to be cached before boarding, while the plane is at the gate).

Re:Problem with the solution?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

You should upgrade to the T-1000, it automatically configures itself for the required tasks.

JetBlue FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

All true with the exception of JetBlue who provides some of the fastest in-flight WiFi for FREE. I've streamed Netflix on JetBlue flights without any problem.

Gogo very good choice for a company name ...

[nicodem]

In french un gogo means an easily fooled person ...

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.

Virgin Atlantic's 787s

[DougM]

I regularly fly with Virgin Atlantic, and their new 787s have a fantastic wifi service courtesy of T-Mobile. I worked a problem during a recent flight from London to DC spending the entire flight remotely logged-in to remote applications over Citrix XenApp. Latency was poor (you cannae change the laws of physics) but consistent and throughput was perfectly fine.

The cost? £15 for unlimited data for whole the flight. Even better, on my second trip I discovered the service is included in my monthly iPass Mobile Connect subscription, so my incremental cost was zero!

I understand they're using ka-band satellites with approximately 70Mbps per channel. I guess they can always run multiple links if usage takes-off.

Declare SSID's expensive

[amorsen]

When setting up an access point, it should be possible to designate it as "expensive", and by default devices should adhere to this and try to limit unnecessary data usage. I get annoyed when I use my phone as a hot spot and discover that my computer has fetched upgrades, my other phone has downloaded a bunch of podcasts, and so on. It would also allow me to keep a backup wireless SSID running permanently, knowing that the devices will go for the cheap SSID first.

I bet that quite a bit of bandwidth usage on planes is due to phones thinking they are switching from expensive (but actually dirt cheap) 3G/4G to cheap (but actually really expensive) wifi.

Re:Declare SSID's expensive

[hankwang]

"When setting up an access point, it should be possible to designate it as "expensive", and by default devices should adhere to this and try to limit unnecessary data usage"

Android has a feature (settings / data usage / menu / mobile hotspots) to do exactly that. Android also seems to detect if it is tethered to another Android phone but I'm not sure how that works. iPhones certainly don't recognize Android hotspots, as a I learned when my friend's iPhone downloaded 50 MB roaming data in 3 minutes when she just wanted to check her email.

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.