United Airlines to launch Starlink wi-fi in spring 2025 | Hacker News Reader

United Airlines to launch Starlink wi-fi in spring 2025

techinasia.com

67 pointsf1shy76 comments

That's cool, but what I'd really like to see is something like Starlink on Amtrak trains. I would be happy with slower but much more comfortable train rides if I could do my work on the train.

Can’t you use a mobile data connection?

Not if it's going through remote, unpopulated areas (like the California Zephyr).

Admittedly, I felt this actually added to my enjoyment of the Zephyr ride -- total disconnection.

Mobile data sucks even in the densely populated northeast parts of the Amtrak system. Cell network congestion and dead spots where the railroad takes a path away from population centers and highways.

Yeah, and I'm not in the northeast, so for me, an Amtrak ride almost always means riding through long stretches of rural (and sometimes practically wilderness) areas. Mobile data connection goes in and out, very unreliable.

No, absolutely not. It constantly cuts out in the Northeast

You’d rather ride a train for 20 hours instead of a 2 hour flight?

If I could work on my laptop, yeah. There's a list of reasons why I don't like flying, but I have to do it a few times a year.

And I work from home. I need a dependable Internet connection for my work, but otherwise I don't need much. If I could sit on a train instead of sit in my house, that would be nice. Watching the countryside roll by is a nice office window :)

More like 4-5 hrs vs 20 when you account for the fact that you have to be at the airport early to deal with security and boarding among other airport slowdowns.

Elon Musk streamed Path of Exile 2 from an airplane using Starlink a few days ago. It was surprisingly decent.

> It was surprisingly decent

Much better than Diablo 4, that's for sure.

Agreed. I don't think I'll be able to go back. PoE2 has its warts, for sure, but it's EARLY access and it's already better than Diablo 4, which is saying a lot.

A private jet with a prioritised Starlink connection, no doubt. Alas, most people are not the richest person in the world.

I streamed on Starlink on Hawaiian last month. For free. From coach. It was fine.

If anything I'd expect performance to improve on a plane. Aside from the cabin itself, it's line of sight. What I'm really curious about is how well LTE over Starlink will work.

> Starlink offers download speeds between 40 and 220 Mbps and upload speeds of 8 to 25 Mbps, which allows streaming and video conferencing during flights.

Oh man, I really hope I don't have to sit anywhere near somebody doing a video conference during a flight. We've avoided this minefield previously since phones don't work on planes so it's not been an issue before, but it seems we're about to cross that bridge.

Incidentally, I hope this doesn't mean that as employees we'll be expected to attend meetings even when on a plane...

Shouldn't the law prohibiting the voice calls on flight be changed first?

Which law is this specifically? Airfone was a thing for years.

https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ254/PLAW-115publ254.p...

Section 403, passed in 2018. Search for "41725" for an easier search through the PDF. Installed phones are not prohibited, it's more about restrictions on personal, portable electronic devices brought on by passengers. Crew are also exempted.

> ‘‘(2) MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE.—

>> ‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘mobile communications device’ means any portable wireless telecommunications equipment utilized for the transmission or reception of voice data.

Can you imagine being stuck for hours with loud and obnoxious human being who thinks that they are in their right to explain all of their work and family problems to the entire airplane? I hope airlines will forbid such behavior but it might be time to buy noise suppressing headphones for the gun silencers are not allowed on board.

Seems like a use case for AI right here; just have the user 'talk' silently, mouthing the words or in a very quiet whisper. I assume AI can read lips pretty well by now right? So turn on your video, have the AI already know how to synthesize your voice, and then just careful mouth the words into the camera. An AI model should be able to live-synthesize your voice that matches what you want to say and I think there would be minimal latency, not any worse than other video conferencing latency. And with headphones on, nobody on the plane can hear the other side, or you. And you could get a live transcript visible to you as well, so you could know if the AI made a mistake in reading your lips and you could correct it.

Might look weird but shrug.

AI can read lips better than humans. Unfortunately, lip reading isn't really possible. Too much ambiguity and way too hard to do it in a recognizable way while not making any sounds.

To disambiguate, the person on the plane could learn to use hand signals (e.g., Cued Speech) and the AI model can be trained on that.

I can't tell if this is an oblique reference to keyboards or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cued_speech

> Can you imagine being stuck for hours with loud and obnoxious human being

You just accidentally made the case for WFH :)

I'm not calling you sensitive because this also upsets me but... "get over it"?

There's no law that says somebody can't take a phone call or a conference on a bus. A plane is just a bus in a sky ("public transportation")

Are they being kind of rude/selfish? Sure. Are you being kind of rude to say "you can't do this thing you want to do because it's an inconvenience to me"?

There's also no law against me belting out some opera classics on the plane while my 6 year old accompanies me on the violin I got them for christmas.

But the pleasure it brings the two of us might be outweighed by the displeasure of the other 500 people on the plane.

Acela does have the quiet car.

Many more people do sleep on planes than busses.

There aren't specific laws about this, but the law does allow for private businesses, and even public services to set rules around behavior.

There likely is a rule about being disruptive on a bus (or airplane), and it is within the law to enforce those rules.

And a business can decide they no longer wish to serve a specific customer.

Can you imagine being stuck for hours with loud and obnoxious...

Yes, which is why I never get on an airplane without headphones/earbuds. Seems simple enough to solve this problem at the receiving end.

I can guarantee that even top of the line noise cancelling headphones do not obscure a conversation happening next to me. The only way to drown out enough noise is to raise the volume to an uncomfortable-to-me level.

If you are lucky enough that you can be in comfort and noise-isolated from earbuds or headphones, I envy you.

> Can you imagine being stuck for hours with loud and obnoxious human being who thinks that they are in their right to explain all of their work and family problems

That describes the current situation in lots of everyday setups, like waiting room in a clinic, bus, train…

Sometimes I wish the world was more like Japan in that regard…

I almost always wish that in almost every regard :)

You mean what already existed 20 years ago?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airfone

The TOS of airplane wifi I used last week prohibited voice usage.

Is that consistent with net neutrality principles? Should commercial resellers of network connections be permitted, as a question of law, to set rules dictating the contents and endpoints of those bits?

(I'm not happy with the direction of tech culture, that this could be an open question. The first half of the computer revolution was about making cool things for people to use. The second half seems to be about taking those cool things away. I imagine an airline user from 1950's jet age, who would be beyond astounded to learn a human could talk to anyone on the planet from the *middle of the freakin' ocean*, through a series of space-based microwave relays—they would give their right hand to live in that reality. Now that we've created literal magic, we're... simply throwing it away? Bah, humbug).

presumably... airlines have been allowing certain messaging providers (whatsapp, imessage, etc) to send text messages during a flight.

But you can't send a Signal message or send a photo.

They could trivially allow the network to be used for anything, but also have a rule about behavior in the cabin to not disturb any other passengers. They’d be imposing restrictions only on physical actions you take during the term of the contract between the two of you, and while you are in the location that contract specifies. The ticket is the contract. And they can say, “Don’t talk with your voice to anyone not on the plane.” Or however they’d like to word it.

Personally, I’d hate to be next to someone on a call on a plane, and I’d hate to be on a call while next to someone on a plane. This is personal preference. It is no better or worse than your personal preference to sit next to someone while they take a call or to take a call while sitting next to someone.

Perhaps we’ll see an evolution of plane seating to allow for quiet zones, similar to how some trains have quiet cars.

Analogously, terrestrial places that offer internet have behavioural restrictions on how they're used.

I can imagine a number of things that can kicked you out of coffee shops that have guest wifi. Since it's a private business, that doesn't bother me on principle.

Libraries are often pretty open about what they allow, but the one at my university had a policy of "porn is fine unless other patrons see it and object." I find that policy to be incredibly reasonable.

It's an FAA, FCC, Department of Transportation, Airline and Flight attendant ban.

And that's before you get to the ban in law because the FCC mused about letting airlines decide. In 2018

Those regulations targeting EMI with aviation communications would no longer make sense, I think, when we're talking about the airliner's own wi-fi; that should be flight-qualified for that purpose.

> imagine an airline user from 1950's jet age, who would be beyond astounded to learn a human could talk to anyone on the planet from the middle of the freakin' ocean, through a series of space-based microwave relays—they would give their right hand to live in that reality.

Well, perhaps, since air travel was much more heavily slanted towards high-ranking executives. For them communication matters.

For the vast majority of everyone, it is true now, and it was then, that sending and receiving communications up to a day earlier than otherwise doesn't approach the value of your right hand.

It's disappointing to see your comment downvoted because although I strongly don't want people making calls on the plane, your perspective is interesting and you make a good argument :-)

I would definitely agree I don't want arbitrary restrictions, but when jamming a ton of humans from all walks of life into a narrow metal tube, sealing it, and sailing it through the air, we have to have some common rules of conduct to prevent it turning into an unbearable hell for some of the people. Definitely don't want to see governments pass laws or even ISPs, but the plane owners I see no issue with and in fact think it is an important thing to do.

There's a difference between "you can't use Zoom but you can use Webex" and "you aren't permitted to do video or voice calls on our plane."

Not when all 300 passengers decide they want to stream in “high quality”...

yeah, i'm assuming this is up to 220Mb/s for the whole plane, not for each passenger.

airplane wifi is still going to suck.

Delta courtesy of T-Mobile has been solid in my experience. A few times not but in general it works really well.

I can't remember where or how I pieced this together, but I'm guessing that each plane will have two dishes (which will be bonded together), and Starlink is expecting bandwidth to improve to Gbit speed, so it will probably be 2 Gb/s down for the whole plane. Still not great if every passenger is streaming HD video, but I imagine with some "traffic shaping" (aka throttling) it will be pretty snappy for web browsing and small file downloads.

Netflix HD isn't that much. And no; two dishes won't give you 2 Gbps.

You'll need four in Ku Band (that's what's publicly in use)

To get 2 Gbps antennas in Ka, V, E or Q will have to be used.

The bridge has been crossed for a few years.

I watch streaming video over plane Wi-Fi. Sometimes over the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.

That's typically a CDN node on the plane though, not a live 2-way connection.

I’m watching videos from my Plex server sitting in my living room, on the other side of Earth…

…or random skate videos on YouTube which won’t be replicated.

So it’s not the on-plane CDN.

It’s true that the upstream probably isn’t too great for streaming but I also upload media over plane Wi-Fi just fine.

Really? I doubt that. How large is a node on the plane?

Buffered streaming is quite different than a two way call. The latency on traditional airplane WiFi would make video calls more like a two way radio with “Over!” pauses in between.

Sure, but my point isn’t that over technical specs. Plane Wi-Fi is already good enough to let people do some seriously rude stuff but yet I have not heard of it being a problem.

United, who are the ones quoted to be adding Starlink, has already invested some of the most I have seen in on-plane Internet so this is just a gradual upgrade for those who fly United.

I did this once.

I explained the situation ahead of time to a coworker in the same meeting and that I'd answer any questions via chat.

A little surprised it worked as well as it did.

Yea, I watch YouTube all the time on planes. Usually 480p maybe 720p. Sometimes I find I need to use a VPN to prevent streaming sites from being throttled badly.

Just did Starlink on Hawaiian Airlines. TOS requests you avoid video and the cabin staff enforces it

United, and all major carriers I've flown on recently, already offer wifi (good enough to stream YT, in my experience, so presumably already good enough to attend meetings), this isn't a new service announcement.

This announcement is just that they are going to be trialing using Starlink as an ISP in addition to the other providers they already work with.

> good enough to stream YT, in my experience, so presumably already good enough to attend meetings

YT needs bulk throughput while meetings need latency and quality. YT can seem smooth for much longer despite massive amounts of retransmission and packet loss, meetings fall apart rapidly with even a tiny bit of those

you really have to try it. On a flight to Hawaii in October, I was getting speeds of 300+ mbps and latency that felt like my home wifi. It's just seamless and feels like an entirely different product than any other connectivity I've had in the air.

The transpacific United flights I’ve been on have all blocked audio and video streaming.

Finally, youporn on a plane.

Might depend on what state you’re flying over. ;)

Actually interesting, do ISP levels blocks mandated by government apply to planes in their airspace using satellite internet?

Starlink has been deployed on JSX for almost a year now and I've taken quite a few flights on their Bay Area to LA and Vegas routes. Despite 20 people on the planes, no one has ever been on a video conference, though I could see it becoming an issue with a broader consumer base.

Tons of the Hawaiian flights have it now too. It's such a game changer. Most people are on YouTube, it looks like -- no video calls I've seen.

I just did an Antarctic cruise that had StarLink. While it sucked to have internet access - like, I wish I could’ve been fully disconnected - it did allow me to run my stuff remotely and ultimately have more time out there.

Pretty wild how well it works.

Flew on Hawaiian last month which had starlink. During the announcements they asked everyone not to do voice or video calls, and said they would disable the internet if they saw people doing it. Will be interesting to see different airlines policies as broadband becomes available on flights

they will have to block the signal in the bathrooms, or those will be used as an "office" by the true optimise and take advantage of everything crowd

> or those will be used as an "office" by the true optimise and take advantage of everything crowd

Easily solved with a fine and, for repeat offenders, a ban from the airline.

Half the call: “yeah I’m on a plane”

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