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

Posted by Soulskill on from the who-can-be-the-first-to-link-the-louis-ck-bit dept.

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.

4 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. JetBlue FTW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Gogo very good choice for a company name ... by nicodem · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. Am I the only person... by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

  4. Virgin Atlantic's 787s by DougM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.