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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

"from calculations we see that the total capacity of the satellite component is, for Europe, 100 Megabits per second"

That doesn't sound like it's going to improve inflight WiFi much. They do mention also downward connectivity to cell towers, so hopefully the satellite link isn't used much. There's not much info on how many spots over Europe won't be covered by the ground cell towers.

Edit: I do find the grumbling about inflight WiFi performance funny. You're in a metal tube that twists and turns, 5+ miles high in the sky, going 500mph. Installing the system means cutting a huge hole in the plane and detailed certification testing down to every wire connector...and thus nothing can be upgraded at a normal pace. Isn't being able to check your email novel enough? Why are you surprised that YouTube doesn't work well?

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Sometimes I feel as if I'm the only person who genuinely doesn't care if I'm disconnected for some number of hours while I'm in a plane. I have reading material, downloaded video, and various apps. I almost appreciate flying time as an opportunity to catch up on various things without distraction.

For a short-haul flight I agree. Wifi provides little benefit, and being disconnected can actually be a blessing.

A long-haul flight is so much more pleasant with wifi. There's only so many movies I can watch (for me, 1 or 2) before I get bored out of my mind.

It can get lonely on a plane if you are traveling alone. The people around you aren't always willing or able to talk (they may be asleep, don't speak English, or are preoccupied with a movie), so you may end up sitting for extended periods with nobody to talk to.

Being able to chat to friends while in the air makes the experience more comfortable than any seat ever could.

To each their own I guess. I have no problem spending a long flight without conversation. Some movies/TV shows/books/games and (preferably) a comfortable seat and I'm set. Give me the choice between a business class seat without WiFi and economy with WiFi and the former gets my vote every time.

Out of curiosity, how do you define a long flight? I've found that most Americans call a flight "long" if it's 4-5 hours. But in my circles -- London-based, doing business in Asia -- "long" means 9-13 hours. Which is qualitatively very different.

(Mind, in those circumstances, a choice between being able to stretch out in business class vs. having WiFi in coach would tilt even harder towards the former. But after about 8 hours in the air, I do find a lack of communications really starts to bite.)

I fly to both Europe and Asia from the US east coast. Yeah it's boring but mostly because I'm more or less stuck in a seat and not because I'm cut off from email, Facebook, and Twitter. Though, for context, I mostly work remotely so not having a real conversation over the course of a day isn't that unusual for me. The boredom of a long flight is more that I can't go outside and walk around or fiddle around in the kitchen than that I can't communicate with someone.

I agree with movies getting borinng after a while, but what about games (those with more complexity than solitaire)?

For example, there's plenty of RPGs of all flavors and settings that would have you exploring, conversing, and battling. Many don't have high system requirements, either, so could be comfortable to play on a netbook or tablet.

Edit to add another idea: I know some flights have games you can play with people in the seats next to you. Why not a plane-wide chatroom of some sort on a web portal? Then you could textually converse with many people without bothering anyone and without any bandwidth/latency restrictions.

I agree entirely, it's hard to do much productive (or not productive) work without WiFi these days. If you're building a little side project you need access to third party APIs etc, or some documentation.

> There's only so many movies I can watch (for me, 1 or 2) before I get bored out of my mind.

How about downloading e.g. some tech talks? Or video lectures?

You're not. The take rate on these services is pretty low. Single digit percentages of the passengers. That's part of the reason they aren't better.

> The take rate on these services is pretty low. Single digit percentages of the passengers.

In-flight WiFi and cellular were available on my last Etihad flight (Europe -> Bangkok via Abu Dhabi).

The charge was something like 25 EUR to share the 1MBit/128Kbit link with the rest of the plane.

So no wonder the uptake on this service is slow low. Business passengers will probably take it because the company pays (or it's included in the cost of their ticket) and for economy passengers it's too much to pay for a handicapped internet connection where they can't even Skype friends or browse Facebook because it's so slow.

They've all done experiments with different price points. The 25 EUR rate isn't likely an accident...it's what gains them the most revenue. The installation costs are very high (certification, aircraft downtime, etc), and for satellite based solutions, the bandwidth cost is high. I don't even think they are trying to make money, just offset as much cost as they can.

As far as I'm aware, they make most of the money on business jets; the commercial side, as far as I'm aware, operates more or less at marginal cost with lower QoS guarantees than the business jets get as a marketing exercise.

The providers (ViaSat, Panasonic, etc) make money. I'm saying the airlines don't make much money on it. They have to bear the installation costs, which are very high, and pay the providers the bandwidth charges. There's also lost revenue while the plane is out of service and a slight (but adds up across the fleet) rise in fuel burn due to the antenna bump. Whatever they charge passengers doesn't recoup it all.

The cell / ground based systems have a different model, and the installation costs, while high, aren't quite as high. But, the providers there, like GoGo, set the pricing, keep the branding, etc, and only share a commission back. I don't believe it's a net positive revenue for the airlines either, but I know less about that space.

> Isn't being able to check your email novel enough?

It was novel a few years ago. It's not any more. At least not for regular travellers.

Perhaps. The physics and economics of these systems, and the regulatory barriers to keeping them current means they will never work as well as what you have at home though.

Maybe, but as someone who use them regularly we've moved far beyond "hopefully check my emails sometime in the next five minutes". It's still not good enough for something like youtube, or even javascript application with a need for low latency, but it's definitely good and reliable enough to "use the internet".

I've used it on both Qatar Airways and Emirates, and would recommand it if you like to work during flight and your work needs the internet (eg emails, your task trackers to follow/answer your team, code reviews, ...), it's also been cheap enough that it fitted into my needs (paying it and getting myself up to date was worth more to me than not paying and then having to catch up after landing).

Ahh, got it. I was including "regular web surfing" along with "check your email". Just saying that higher bandwidth things like videos, spotify, etc, weren't feasible.

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