The WiFi on Virgin America has grown steadfastly slower as more people became aware of it, and despite the $10-$17 price point, has now reached the point of being nearly totally unusable on most of my flights.
Unless Jet Blue has a solution to provide significantly more bandwidth, I can't imagine that free WiFi is going to be less saturated than the paid option on Virgin.
Person on the flight next to my wife, plunks down double digit dollars for WiFi and then clicks the NetFlix app on the iPad for their kid. It was a problem. A problem because the kid was not well behaved, the kid was in full on you-deny-me-this-at-your-peril whine/rant/scream. Mom was beside herself tring to figure out why the network was "working" but NetFlix wasn't, the Mom had zero technical grasp of what networks are all about (and why should she?).
As an engineer it really demonstrated how badly the tech community can abuse the expectations of the non-tech community. Southwest paid a heavy goodwill cost on that flight, I think that impedes the roll out of these services.
They claim it will have "exponentially more bandwidth than any other product in commercial aviation today". I know that's an incorrect and meaningless use of the term "exponential", but the bottom line is they're claiming it will be a lot faster:
It's claimed the system will offer 12mbps or more to each passenger via ViaSat-1, which should offer 140 Gbps total throughput ("the highest capacity satellite in the world" with "more capacity than all current North American satellites combined")
Agreed. I flew for business on Delta cross country frequently and used to quite enjoy my "wifi-time" when I could work without phone interruption for 2-4 hours at a time.
Google then had a free wifi special for holiday season and it essentially became unusable.
I used wifi on a flight for the first time a few weeks ago- it was fantastic. Not perfect, but it converted six hours of dead time into productive time.
It got me thinking about how driverless cars will represent a similar change. They seem like they are one technical innovation that we'll definitely see in my working lifetime, and I'm looking forward to it. Imagine being able to start and end your working day on a laptop in the car, rather than wasting time commuting.
Wifi on flights has had the exact opposite effect on my productivity while flying. I used to be able to churn out interesting new things because I had no choice but to focus on them. Now I'm too weak to not be distracted by email, Twitter and HN to pass the time.
Another link-bait post title. Just like the Manchester getting rid of airport scanners (catch: to be replaced by another type of scanner) and Russia's secret diamond field (catch: of hard to mine industrial-quality-only diamonds, which wouldn't affect the market).
"Our source claims that following this initial trial period, the service will remain free for "basic email and browsing" purposes, though you'll obviously be paying if you hope to stream Netflix during those cross-country flights."
I do most of my domestic flying on Delta, which has in flight Wifi (via Gogo) available on most (if not all) of their aircraft. The quality is really hit or miss. I've had flights where the connection was good enough to download large files (debugging symbols from Microsoft) and have one way Skype sessions (me typing, the other person with audio/video). I've also had flights where I could barely check my email. I'm not sure if it's the route flown or the other passengers using the connection or what, but the highly variable quality is annoying.
Hopefully other airlines will follow suit. Airlines find any reason they can to upsell passengers, so it is refreshing to see one that will be rolling out a service for free. This fact alone makes we want to support their business.
Unless Jet Blue has a solution to provide significantly more bandwidth, I can't imagine that free WiFi is going to be less saturated than the paid option on Virgin.