Airline companies are swiftly trying to add Wi-Fi to as many of their aircraft as possible, but it is a challenge for them to do so at a speed that will entice customers to spend that extra money. One of the biggest complaints that fliers have had about Wi-Fi on flights, besides the high costs, was that the speed of the Internet was just too slow. That exact problem may soon become a problem of the past.
Gogo, Inc. is the main supplier for Internet services in the skies. They have announced that they are planning to launch a new version of Wi-Fi for aircraft that will use cellular towers on the ground and satellites circling the earth. This new version is expected to process Internet speeds six times as fast as what is currently being offered. This has the people at Virgin America in a state of great expectation, since they will only be able to launch the new Gogo system in the latter part of next year.
Jack Nicas and Andy Paszto of The Wall Street Journal reported that “its new service will offer speeds of 60 megabits per second to each airplane, compared with 3Mbps on its original Wi-Fi connection, which 1,700 aircraft still use, and 10Mbps on an updated product launched last year, which about 300 aircraft have.”
JetBlue Airways has announced that they will become Internet-friendly sometime this year on selected flights, and plan to have it deployed on all of their aircraft by the end of 2015. This comes largely thanks to government approval of a new high-capacity satellite link on board that will allow fliers to stream such channels as Hulu (News - Alert) or Netflix, which are blocked from usage on several other airlines.
Although Gogo generally establishes the price for onboard Wi-Fi — $14 for a single day pass and $50 for a monthly pass—JetBlue says that it has plans to offer its basic Wi-Fi for free to its passengers. JetBlue will have a service charge for those passengers that wish to stream sites like Hulu and Netflix.
Though many people claim they want to have Wi-Fi capabilities when they are flying, there will also be those passengers that will miss the days when they could sit back and enjoy the flight while they decompressed and disconnected from the computerized world.