Inflight Internet – Not to bad
Just flying back form San Francisco on Virgin America and got a chance to try out their on-flight Internet access via GoGo . My first reaction is that its pretty good from a stability and experience perspective. I didn’t try to run any voice or real time services but for email and web browser activity it was as good or better than I get on my cellular broadband connection. As a geek, I ran a few tests and while its pretty high round-trip latency it does not impact web and email services.
Pinging Yahoo.com from the plane:
Pinging yahoo.com [209.131.36.159] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 209.131.36.159: bytes=32 time=254ms TTL=50
Reply from 209.131.36.159: bytes=32 time=772ms TTL=50
Reply from 209.131.36.159: bytes=32 time=551ms TTL=50
Reply from 209.131.36.159: bytes=32 time=628ms TTL=50
Ping statistics for 209.131.36.159:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 254ms, Maximum = 772ms, Average = 551ms
Also went to DSL Reports.com and ran a speed tes
t and had throughput of around 300kb/s upstream and 500kb/s downstream. Not bad at all given the network topology and the fact that I am on a plane traveling a little over 500 MPH. What I could not tell is how many other people on the plane where also using the system so local and down link congestion may get worse as this system is more heavily used.
From a cost perspective it is pretty reasonable and are tiered from $5.95 for a short flight to $12.95 for long haul flights. Given how boring it is to be on a plane these days the cost of being connected is pretty reasonable.
Given how long the industry has been trying to make this work and the huge failure of Connexion, its is nice to see a working technology and business model (so far) . Given that this system is using existing mobile technology the interesting future will be if and how this service improves when new mobile broadband systems based on LTE and WiMAX become applicable to this use case. Regardless, we continue to be more connected every day.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Hey John! Glad to see your blogs. Pretty cool to see the results on the Internet access – seems impressive – I would definitely use it (unless I am tempted by their inflight entertainment)
Interesting point you raise re: the business model being used by Virgin (BTW I love flying with them). Their approach of enticing passengers to buy incremental services (such as Internet, upgrades, food, entertainment) for a reasonable fee is only slightly different from the other airlines. However, the one thing that is obviously different is how easy they have made it for their passengers – their touchscreen system along with the change in the supporting processes (e.g. the planes will need to stock more food & attendants will need to make more trips than other airlines).
BTW, any comment on Ericsson’s win and what it means for LTE growth in NA?
Regards,
-SS-