Online at 32,000 feet
February 27 2005
It works!
Here we are aboard a Lufthansa Airbus
340 in their newly configured Business Class. As promised, firing up the
wifi located six access points with the name "Connexion". Ultimately
required a reboot for whatever reason, but once I did, it's been smooth
surfing. I've been online for about 35 minutes. The connection
has decent performance -- uploaded and downloaded a bunch of pictures from
the trip, replicated mail, chatted on AIM -- all no problem.
The service is a flat US$29.95 for the
full long-haul flight, and there are also per-minute rates. You can
bill to a credit card, or use existing agreements with a few other wifi
providers (NTT DoCoMo is one). Shorter flights are cheaper.
One weird thing is that the seat power
outlet also has a 10Base-T and a USB connector. The 10BaseT connector
failed to give me an IP address -- seems weird that they'd wire the seats
for what would be faster than this 802.11b connection, but aren't using
that.
Oh, and the other weird thing is that
you can read my in-flight complaints real-time. The guy sitting in
11G hasn't stopped talking since we boarded -- geez, I hope he runs out
of steam sometime in the next eight hours!
Post a Comment
- 2
Richard Schwartz http://smokey.rhs.com/web/blog/poweroftheschwartz.nsf | 2/27/2005 7:15:34 AM
It sure does :-)
Wave out the left window when you're flying over Indiana (or, more likely to the North of Indiana). We'll be driving by a bit to the South ;-)
-rich
- 3
Ace | 2/27/2005 7:53:26 AM
Amazing, web access at 32,000 ft, yet IBM/Lotus cannot get DGW to actually work!!!!!!!
It does'nt work!
- 4
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/27/2005 8:07:43 AM
wow, they even have trolls up here!
- 5
Ace | 2/27/2005 8:24:44 AM
Sorry, should not let off steam here, just another Sunday at the office battling with multi-language applications!
- 6
Chris Whisonant http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com | 2/27/2005 11:30:54 AM
Enjoy the flight - I'm having to work today with system problems. Read it in my new blog (shameless plug...)
Trolls are everywhere - don't you know that by now?
- 7
Sally | 2/28/2005 11:07:28 AM
Oh... it's kind of like Starbucks... they too offer wi-fi but I found out this weekend it's not free :( Someone told me there is no such thing as a 'free lunch', and I suppose that translates to no such thing as 'free internet access' :( However, I would totally pay $30 to be connected to help make all those international flight hours go by quicker. So, does anyone out there in 'Ed Brill Blogland' know when Southwest might be getting this service? <lol>
- 8
Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 3/1/2005 10:44:22 AM
This link { Link } might help with that answer since Boingo is now hitting the air with wireless agreements
- 9
jonvon http://jonvon.net | 3/2/2005 9:06:09 AM
"Oh, and the other weird thing is that you can read my in-flight complaints real-time."
hehe, blogs extend that whole 15 minutes of fame thing into some odd shapes...
Wi-Fi probably has more bandwidth than the sat uplink. If the wire worked I would have opened a new access point with my Airport sharing the $30 feed. :-)