The San Francisco Chronicle published an article today on the status the testing of inflight WiFi on airplanes in the USA. It's an interesting read. Here is their list of the status of WiFi testing by US domestic airlines:
-- Alaska Airlines: Testing wireless Internet access this summer
-- American Airlines: Testing service on 15 planes by mid-year
-- Continental: Testing limited wireless next year
-- JetBlue: Currently testing one plane offering limited Yahoo e-mail, IM chat and BlackBerry e-mail service
-- Southwest Airlines: Testing service on four planes in late summer
-- Virgin America: Testing service late this year
I question the reality of AirCell's claim regarding speed and network capacity:
The company said the setup can
deliver 3 Mbps to the plane, which is compressed and allows travelers
to share the equivalent of a 15 Mbps connection.
I have a hard time believing that they can deliver network capacity that is equivalent to a 15Mbps connection when the plane only will have 3Mbps of bandwidth. Most pictures and other components of web pages are already highly compressed. Compressing an already compressed file doesn't generally make it any smaller.
This service will work great when there are only a couple of people using it - but the more popular it becomes the worse it will be. Don't get me wrong, I think inflight WiFi is a great idea and should be pursued. I just don't like vendors who make promises they can't keep.
