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Boeing Scraps In-flight Internet Access
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Aug 18, 2006 04:42 AM
from the world-not-yet-ready dept.
from the world-not-yet-ready dept.
Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the BBC, Boeing has recently announced that it has abandoned Connexion, its in-flight broadband service. Said Boeing CEO Jim McNerney: 'Regrettably, the market for this service has not materialized as had been expected. We believe this decision best balances the long-term interests of all parties with a stake in Connexion by Boeing.'"
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Hardware: Google In-Flight WiFi? 52 comments
Google has been trying hard to be break into the Enterprise market, without notable success. The Formtek blog suggests that projects like this week's roll-out of free WiFi in Mountain View blur their focus from areas where they might achieve a higher ROI. Both Boeing's and Verizon's recent announcements of exiting the in-flight WiFi space might be an opportunity for Google to capture more attention from business eyeballs in airports and on-flight.
But highly unlikely.
But highly unlikely.
[+]
Hardware: Panasonic May Relaunch In-flight Broadband 109 comments
Glenn Fleishman writes "Panasonic's avionics division may relaunch Connexion by Boeing by using similar technology that's better, cheaper, and lighter. The company said today that they were looking to get airlines to commit to 500 planes within 60 days, and already had 150 aircraft committed. They'd still use Ku band, but have a cheaper and smaller set of leases. Connexion had at least $120m in yearly fixed expenses, a large part of which was transponder licenses. The new service would provide 12 Mbps down and 3 Mbps (versus Connexion's 5 Mbps/1 Mbps), and be priced conceivably as low as $10 per session wholesale, with airlines choosing to not mark up rates. With that higher rate, even with latency, in-flight VoIP seems more achievable at a reasonable cost, although some airlines may choose to block VoIP services.
I reported for The Economist magazine last week about mobile phones in flight (services coming in Europe in 2007). Three U.S. airlines told me that American passengers have very low interest or negative interest in allowing any voice (cell or otherwise) during flights. Europeans, with shorter flights and lower expectations of privacy perhaps, are more open to it." We covered the story back when Boeing decided to scrap Connexion.
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Not a problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a problem... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Well DUH (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well DUH (Score:5, Informative)
The only restriction is on drinks and liquids not purchased within the terminal.
Parent
Re:Well DUH (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If this happens, then JetBlue will probably build a keyboard into the seat tray. Maybe you'd VPN into your corporate network.
Enough ubiquitous Internet and terminal access and you end up with laptops and PDAs being obsolete.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow - that seems like a big investment to get people to flock to your airline. I'd think free booze might cost about the same, and people (everyone I know) would definetly fly such an airline. Plus, it would be easier to spot terrorists - they'd be the sober ones.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, this harkens back to the days when "Jet Set" implied a sybaritic life of privilege and pleasure, not an endless grid of boarding and trying catch a few winks of sleep on red eyes. Back in the day before laptops, you took a book on a flight just in case your seatmate was a bore (if you were a bore that was his or hopefully, her problem).
However, it is almost certainly not the case that free
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well DUH (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait..
Parent
where's the market (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:where's the market (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, if you're flying over multiple countries, you need to get on several different cellphone networks, which means having to sign contracts with multiple providers if you wanna connect the entire plane, or having to worry about huge roaming charges. Not to mention cellphones don't work everywhere over land either, and in some regions, networks might be incapable of handling anything besides voice traffic.
Connexion probably didn't take off (pun intended) because of the costs invovled. You could pay for a landline connection for a month with what you had to pay for an entire flight of Internet access
Parent
Re:where's the market (Score:5, Informative)
They do. It is a common misconception that the authorities want cell phones off in flight because of safety. The reason is simple, because the plane is travelling so fast, and the ground system is more or less designed for automobile speeds, the cell system hands off to the next cell very rapidly causing grief for the cell system owners.
It likely will not work when over an unpopulated area, but near cities and main hiways it should. This isn't to say the connection will be stable, it likely will not be. 9/11 worked because they were in a populated area flying relatively low.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yet that is what is being told all the time by the airlines. The same lame excuse is often used in hospitals.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627970/ [msn.com]
Quote: there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests battery-operated devices, [...] might disrupt critical aircraft navigation systems.
OTOH I don't mind the ban of cellphones on an airplane. Can you imagine trying to sleep and having some 'businessman
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now back to reality: The stress of being in a hostage situation might make people act a wee-bit differently, and one person who thinks "it was not my son" doesn't explain the other 15 or so people who *did* hear from their loved ones. 14 out of 15 witnesses would be enough do get you convicted of most crimes, especially when the 15th is unsure more than they have any proof. The government could not possibly pull off a stunt
Re:where's the market (Score:5, Informative)
What IS true and a scientifically proven fact is that cell phones at high altitudes create unusually high loads on the cellular network. See what I said earlier about good LOS to *multiple* towers? The end result is that instead of appearing as a user on one tower on a given frequency and nowhere else, it appears as a user or a strong interferer on many towers.
The end result is that while a cell network may have the capacity to server N users on the ground per cell, it can only support a total of around N users in the air for ALL cells within LOS of the aircraft. This is why the ban on airborne cell phones was originally an FCC rule, not an FAA one.
Parent
A common misconception (Score:5, Insightful)
Cellphones, of course, don't work on flights as a general rule. They only work on flights THAT PASS OVER LOTS OF CELL PHONE CELLS. The Pacific, the Gobi, the Sahara, and Greenland are all good examples of places not rich in cell phone cells.
Of course, if by 'plane travel' you unconsciously mean 'plane travel within the continental United States', then sure, you can just use your cell phone.
Parent
Re:where's the market (Score:4, Informative)
Keep in mind that the metal fuselage of the aircraft provides quite a bit of RF shielding and radiation pattern distortion, I would not be surprised if you could use a cell phone near a window but not from an aisle.
It's a fact that people HAVE used cell phones on airplanes before, and back in the old AMPS analog days, the problem of hitting multiple cells was much worse. Not only did it cause interference problems at the additional cells, it often cause people to be billed multiple times for the same call and other such oddities because the network was designed with the assumption that a phone could NEVER be heard from a distance greater than a certain amount.
In the case of GSM, there is an inherent limit on the distance of a phone from a tower, I forget the exact limit. It could potentially cause GSM phones to completely fail above a certain altitiude, but you only need 1000-2000 feet of altitude (extremely low for an airliner) for the assumptions used in designing cellular networks to all go out the window.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:where's the market (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Inside a typical commercial jet, you fly at about 30K feet, the RF has to find its way out through the portholes so the mobile's transmitter automatically ramps up to maximum. You have line of sight to the ground stations but at full cruising altitude, they have antennas tweaked to send out mostly sideways.
It will work, but not very w
abandoned because of security issues? (Score:3, Interesting)
pricing (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/index.cfm?p=cbb.
Internet Flight
Get flat-rate access for your entire flight.
$26.95 for entire flight, including connecting flights within 24 hours of signing in.*
Internet Time
Get 1, 2, or 3 hours of access. Internet Time begins when you sign in and counts down whether you are signed in or not.
Access Price
1 hour $9.95
2 hours $14.95
3 hours $17.95
*Price shown in US dollars. No taxes or duties will be added. Prices are reduced during maintenance periods.
Re:pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that most people pay about that much at home for a MONTH of broadband
I'd say pricing was a major sticking point and contributed in no small part to the demise of the service pilot.
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:4, Interesting)
And for a few hour flight, yeah, it does add up a bit. But when I fly from Melbourne to Glasgow, 9 hours to Hong Kong, 13 hours to London, and 90 minutes to Glasgow, it ends up costing about a dollar an hour.
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that most people pay about that much at home for a MONTH of broadband
And what about flight itself! It is so expensive! I can ride my bike for three hours almost for free, but for a flight I have to pay hundreds of euros. Why would anyone want that?
Parent
Re:pricing (Score:5, Informative)
Cost certainly was another reason why it wasn't more widely used, but that excuse doesn't fly (pardon the pun) when you consider most corporate flyers are running on expense accounts, and certainly the cost of connecting up can be covered by those accounts. After all, go to Las Vegas and try to find a free wi-fi spot along the Strip, or stay in the hotel and use their Internet services. You'll pay $9.95 a day (or $49.95 a week) for access (and most places are through the television, not wireless). Yes, I know Las Vegas has a wi-fi grid being developed (such as the free access at the airport), but where the hotels are, they have worked hard to keep those free services from being available to the public.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
On the plus side, your phone would be so close to
It wasn't the expense to the consumer... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
A more intelligent thing to do would be to add 5$ surcharge per ticket on business/first class tickets and then propose FREE UNLIMITED BROADBAND CONNECTION on flights. They're paying shitloads of money for those tickets anyway, so the surcharge would pass unnoticed, allowing the company to one-up other airlines in terms of service :)
Oh yeah, I forgot 4- Profit !!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The airlines aren't making shitloads of money these days and the infrastructure for sattelite broadband is expensive. It isn't difficult to imagine a more or less permanent ban on carry-on laptops on the northeast coriddor and North Atlantic runs.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So, compared to that, the prices aren't that bad.
pricing versus performance (Score:4, Informative)
I suspect the real reason they weren't doing business was because of the performance, not the price.
Parent
No! (Score:5, Funny)
Insert Plane and/or Snake joke here. (Score:3, Funny)
Health Issues (Score:5, Funny)
If you were sitting near me on a plane spouting corporate buzzwords or telling your hard of hearing relatives that "...yes! We're on the plane...", for hours on end, and if I have to hear the latest (and always truly inane and über-irritating) ring tone over and over, then trust me, you would be in terrible terrible terrible danger...
Hich costs (Score:3, Informative)
Flight times (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking personally, if i'm on a flight under 3 hours then by the time you've gone up, had a drink and got your food out of the way, you're getting ready to land again.
Flights that are 4-5 hours, I usually watch the film, read the book or (if i'm really inclined to do some work) I'll fire up my laptop and work on something offline.
Flights that are over 5 hours, I'll generally try and catch some sleep so that I'm refreshed when I get there.
As such, there is only small chance that i'll even think about using a laptop and, even then, the requirement for internet is limited. It doesn't surprise me that this venture is not particually sucessful.
imagine that (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: not nearly as many people are willing to get jacked for $35/hr for internet access as we had believed.
Though on a completely different angle, at the rate things are going now, soon we won't be able to get on a plane with anything short of our underwear, and will have to fed-ex our luggage to our destination. What happened to the good 'ol days when the people were more scared of the public than the government was?
FedEx it all (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I've been doing that for over a decade.
I used to oversee nationial rollouts of systems, which meant I was on the road 95% of the time, often spending only a day or two in each site before moving on. I had enough to worry about without babysitting a suitcase which may or may not arrive on my flight, but was on the road long enough and in different enough climates every week that a roll-on wasn't sufficient.
Enter FedEx.
Every few weeks I'd pack up a load of freshly cleaned/laundered clothes and send them to my major destinations over the next month. Coats & thick socks to cold places, extra shirts & undershirts to hot ones, replacement underwear, etc. I'd put each cache in a cheap collapsable nylon duffel, then into the office for shipping to jobsites with strict instructions to hold for my arrival (there were usually a couple of other boxes full of gear)
Sure I had to pop by a store every so often, but at least I wasn't inconveniently buying a couple of new dress shirts at top dollar every week, and these were already laundered, pressed, etc. Plus when you're from out of town finding a store that sells decent dress shirts or whatever, getting to it, etc. is just another hassle one can do without. My concerns were the job, finding my way back to tonight's hotel, getting fed decently, and getting to the airport; not haberdashery.
Even if I'm paying I still often ship clothes ahead. It is a small expense compared to much of the trip, and frankly skipping the joy of dragging the suitcase to the airport, then the thrill of the lugguage carrousel at the other end (wheel... of... mangled... lugguage! Did mine arrive today or is it on it's way to Guam? Let's wait an hour surrounded by annoying people to find out!), makes it worth every penny. Check in to my hotel, have them send the box to my room, ahh, properly packed clothes, nothing crushed, all ready for wearing during my stay.
Seriously, career advice? Show up every day looking neat & fresh when everyone else is rumpled and worn. Especially true with suits, they can only be worn so many days in a row before getting nasty, no matter how often they're sent out for overnight abuse at outragous rates by the hotel dryclean service. Shipping costs are just a sound investment then.
Parent
The real reason this won't fly (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how US airlines pack you in like sardines, I can't open up my notebook larger than 60 degrees. That's not enough to see the display properly. The last thing I'm gonna do in this configuration is connect to the Internet.
What were they charging? $5/minute or something? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well duh.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Shhh...Re:Well duh.... (Score:3, Funny)
Next they will ban passengers from flights.
Homeland.Sec: "People are responsible for causing all these crashes. After exhaustive investigation by FAA, we have concluded that presence of passengers on flights is 100% responsible for all these h1jackings. Henceforth, all passengers are banned from flights