inFlight WiFi guide for world airlines

[markis10]

Quite a handy piece!

http://www.businesstraveller.com/files/BT-SEPT-12-Wifi-chart-2.pdf

 

[Austman]

It's spot on for SQ:

 

[here2go]

There's a wifi battle going on in Scandinavia. Both SAS and Norwegian are both giving it for free. Can we have the same battle in Australia please?

 

[coyote25]

There's a wifi battle going on in Scandinavia. Both SAS and Norwegian are both giving it for free. Can we have the same battle in Australia please?

Now that would be awesome. At this point I'd settle for a paid service

 

[here2go]

I reckon most Y travellers on domestic routes these days would rather have free Wifi over food, at least in the Golden Triangle. On Redeyes I'd rather just be left alone - being woken by a Qantas steward with a breakfast tray shoved in my sleeping face at 0400 DRW time is not appreciated.

 

[ashleyn]

I reckon most Y travellers on domestic routes these days would rather have free Wifi over food, at least in the Golden Triangle. On Redeyes I'd rather just be left alone - being woken by a Qantas steward with a breakfast tray shoved in my sleeping face at 0400 DRW time is not appreciated.

Disagree, I can do without email for 3 hours and if not might be time to reassess your life priorities.

 

[drewbles]

There's a wifi battle going on in Scandinavia. Both SAS and Norwegian are both giving it for free. Can we have the same battle in Australia please?

Now that would be awesome. At this point I'd settle for a paid service

The problem is isolation. Systems in the USA using GoGo are ground-to-air based systems. The fact that most of the USA is populated makes this exceedingly simple to shove a tower on the ground pointing up at the sky, whilst maintaining a cheap high speed backhaul on the ground. In Europe, there are so many satellites, that capacity on the transponders is cheap.

Alas Australia does not have either situation. Satellite coverage here is a lot more sparse, and the GoGo system is not economically viable here. This is another reason why the long-haul internet solutions are so expensive. Satellite based systems are not cheap. The pricing also actively discourages people from a Skype call saying 'hey look where I am!' and people being generally annoying in the cabin (and yes, I know you can filter Skype, just using it as an example). That's why the in-seat phones are so expensive. It keeps its use to essential/emergency use only (In my hundreds of flights, i've never seen a single person use it).

Disagree, I can do without email for 3 hours and if not might be time to reassess your life priorities.

When you work in IT, and you're running to the airport to catch a flight (3 hours or 13 hours it doesn't matter) and you're in the middle of dealing with a critical outage that only you can fix, that in flight internet may be a blessing and ensure you don't lose a lot of money. Back in around 2000, I was flying SYD-MEL in such a situation (in this case, to MEL to meet with some suppliers, and co-incidentally where the issue was). I was on my mobile until the time I was forced to turn it off for take off. Upon landing 55 minutes later, my voicemail was full, and we had lost 2 customers (big customers). If internet was available in flight back then, it would have equated to hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue staying with the company rather. Of course back then In-flight internet was no more than a sky high dream, but these days where the world would melt down without it, it's even more essential to have such services on offer IMHO.

 

[here2go]

The problem is isolation. Systems in the USA using GoGo are ground-to-air based systems. The fact that most of the USA is populated makes this exceedingly simple to shove a tower on the ground pointing up at the sky, whilst maintaining a cheap high speed backhaul on the ground. In Europe, there are so many satellites, that capacity on the transponders is cheap.

Alas Australia does not have either situation. Satellite coverage here is a lot more sparse, and the GoGo system is not economically viable here. This is another reason why the long-haul internet solutions are so expensive. Satellite based systems are not cheap. The pricing also actively discourages people from a Skype call saying 'hey look where I am!' and people being generally annoying in the cabin (and yes, I know you can filter Skype, just using it as an example). That's why the in-seat phones are so expensive. It keeps its use to essential/emergency use only (In my hundreds of flights, i've never seen a single person use it).


When you work in IT, and you're running to the airport to catch a flight (3 hours or 13 hours it doesn't matter) and you're in the middle of dealing with a critical outage that only you can fix, that in flight internet may be a blessing and ensure you don't lose a lot of money. Back in around 2000, I was flying SYD-MEL in such a situation (in this case, to MEL to meet with some suppliers, and co-incidentally where the issue was). I was on my mobile until the time I was forced to turn it off for take off. Upon landing 55 minutes later, my voicemail was full, and we had lost 2 customers (big customers). If internet was available in flight back then, it would have equated to hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue staying with the company rather. Of course back then In-flight internet was no more than a sky high dream, but these days where the world would melt down without it, it's even more essential to have such services on offer IMHO.

The problem now is bandwidth. Blackberry has the solution in terms of compression, but the customer base has shied away from that to go with what my friend at Telstra calls the "Jesus Phone" - it's the Messiah (iPhone) and Android. I understand at least IE10 will have something like Opera compression for browsers. If there was a convenient medium where we could have basic text and compressed attachments to get reports out, etc. while flying, I'd be happy - as long as the tool who has just had 3 Jim Beam and Cokes in front of me doesn't push right back and nearly break my laptop on the tray table latch (a problem on DRW flights), I'd be happy.

 

[drewbles]

The problem now is bandwidth. Blackberry has the solution in terms of compression, but the customer base has shied away from that to go with what my friend at Telstra calls the "Jesus Phone" - it's the Messiah (iPhone) and Android. I understand at least IE10 will have something like Opera compression for browsers. If there was a convenient medium where we could have basic text and compressed attachments to get reports out, etc. while flying, I'd be happy - as long as the tool who has just had 3 Jim Beam and Cokes in front of me doesn't push right back and nearly break my laptop on the tray table latch (a problem on DRW flights), I'd be happy.

Compression counts for almost nothing these days. Streaming can be compressed, but only a very small amount before the stream is really not viewable.

Caching is amazingly making a comeback. Long after the 'we have enough bandwidth we can kill all the squids' (a popular cache engine platform), it's back with a vengeance.

Bandwidth is a problem yes. Hence why GoGo is so much better (plenty of backhaul between sites on the ground is simple when you have a large land mass of populated cities that have plenty of fibre around the place; unlike Australia where even if you put the towers pointing towards the sky ala GoGo, you still have to haul it from the ground to 'the internet').

 

[greenfish]

Australia wide coverage is challenging, but golden triangle coverage should be straightforward by leveraging off existing cell towers, with reoriented antennas and some software mods.

When you're at 35,000ft, your "line of sight" to a tower is pretty good. Backhaul isn't a problem if using existing towers either.

 

[markis10]

When you're at 35,000ft, your "line of sight" to a tower is pretty good. Backhaul isn't a problem if using existing towers either.

Actually its terrible line of sight when antenna radiation patterns are taken into account, with a typical antenna having a 60 spread from the horizontal, effectively there is a cone of silence over the top.

 

[here2go]

Australia wide coverage is challenging, but golden triangle coverage should be straightforward by leveraging off existing cell towers, with reoriented antennas and some software mods.

When you're at 35,000ft, your "line of sight" to a tower is pretty good. Backhaul isn't a problem if using existing towers either.

I know a former Metroliner cargo pilot who now flies bigger planes who used Telstra Next G pre iPhone days going to the BOM website to navigate his way through storms in the Golden Triangle - no doppler radar for him. (The passenger planes do have it).

 

[greenfish]

Actually its terrible line of sight when antenna radiation patterns are taken into account, with a typical antenna having a 60 spread from the horizontal, effectively there is a cone of silence over the top.

Absolutely, hence my point about reoriented and no-doubt redesigned antennas, as the antennas currently on the cell towers are designed for ground based devices.

 

[markis10]

Absolutely, hence my point about reoriented and no-doubt redesigned antennas, as the antennas currently on the cell towers are designed for ground based devices.

Not practical, then the cell would be serving airborne clients only and not economical. Sure it works at present but distant clients drag down the cells customer count and bandwidth capability as there are less timing slots in that situation, purpose building a network for aircraft is not economical in Australia, its the price we pay for having the population density that sees us enjoying our life in our large houses on land!

 

[drewbles]

Australia wide coverage is challenging, but golden triangle coverage should be straightforward by leveraging off existing cell towers, with reoriented antennas and some software mods.

When you're at 35,000ft, your "line of sight" to a tower is pretty good. Backhaul isn't a problem if using existing towers either.

Most cell towers on the ground have far far far less than an E1 as backhaul (2mb). Throw 3-4 planes on there, with a few people using them, and it's cactus. Also, you'll currently find that voice channels on the towers are going to be prioritised far higher than data due to this. Microwave backhaul is possible, but it's not cheap. You can get a good bang for buck using OFDM wireless in the licensed spectrum too, but once again, not cheap, and the distance between towers will require repeaters, which is even more infrastructure.

 

[drewbles]

Actually its terrible line of sight when antenna radiation patterns are taken into account, with a typical antenna having a 60 spread from the horizontal, effectively there is a cone of silence over the top.

The GoGo infrastructure utilises cell tower space, not the cell base stations themselves. They just aim the antenna to the sky, so you're 60º range isn't so bad from the ground to FL380, but still. You need the coverage to make sure that a plane never leaves that 60º window. That is the problem