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Comment by usui | Hacker News Reader

Recently I flew on a long-distance (so at least a dozen hours of flight time) low-budget airline that had 60 Mbps download/12 Mbps upload and it specifically called out SpaceX Starlink for being able to provide this for free. A video call went smoothly. There was connectivity from takeoff to landing with no interruption in between. This was the best airline experience I've had yet.

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OK, so for this, Starlink is AMAZING! In-flight Starlink is undeniable.

The first time I experienced it, I could not believe what was happening. I messaged my nerd friends with screenshots of https://speed.cloudflare.com/

Also, their required zero-friction UX is the shiznit.

Then, I fell asleep as I finally had theoretical time off.

I flew Delta about 6 months ago and they had something similar, also for free, but they use Viasat. I think most of the big airlines were moving this way anyway to be honest, Starlink just has a good opportunity for advertising.

I believe Viasat internet satellites are placed in geostationary orbit, whereas SpaceX Starlink is not, so the service Viasat provides is already blown out.

Starlink speed and bandwidth is way ahead of any of the existing satellite internet providers.

Long latency makes Viasat good for some things and not so good for others.

Gate to gate (if the plane door is closed) wifi has been a thing for most (all?) of the US airlines for awhile. Delta's wifi is ok, but I routinely have issues. It could be a combination of older technology on the plane and worse satellite network, but it's supposedly nowhere near as good as plane with Starlink.

I also use Starlink at my house in Italy. I'm in a decent sized town, but there is no fiber available. It has worked great, and more importantly took about 10 minutes to setup.

I’ve read so many posts from both CEOs and programmers about their higher in-flight productivity thanks to be offline.

It used to be one of the best parts of a cruise, a week without internet! But it’s pretty decent these days

And this is exactly why we don't need internet on planes.

Yeah, planes are noisy enough without making them into a call center cubicle farm.

Voice and video calls are both outlawed in the US by the DOT.

And the FAA, FCC and as part of the Labour agreement with the Flight staff

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