> To be fair in the case of airplane wifi this is compounded by the exorbitant pricing.

Is this still true, though? I regularly pay $8 for wifi on a 6h flight coast-to-coast with United. And also paid $15 for a 10h transatlantic flight last week, which seems pretty fair to me.

Oh, and messaging and chat apps are free, so you don't really need to pay if you only want to keep in touch with folks on the ground. Sure, quality is sometimes spotty, but seems to have improved over the last couple of years.