Free in-flight Wi-Fi on JetBlue with a catch, of course

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This isn’t exactly what we expected in terms of in-flight Wi-Fi, but beggars can’t be choosers and something is better than nothing. JetBlue, Yahoo! and RIM have announced free in-flight Wi-Fi services starting on the 11th of this month. But there’s a catch as there always is. The service is limited to Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and Wi-Fi enabled BlackBerries will have access to their BB mail and messenger. That’s sort of janky, in my opinion. BetaBlue as it’s being dubbed will roll out on an A320 at 8AM from JFK to SFO.

JetBlue to Test Inflight Email, Instant-Messaging Services [WSJ]

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6 Responses so far

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  1. you suck! Jetblue


  2. Nice try? Well I don’t know how this helps the cost of putting internet in the sky except of sponsors paying for it all. However after 5 minutes of being online, you’re done, that is if you have Yahoo mail. Wouldn’t it be better to have you system used by lots of people for most of their flight than by 3 people for 5% of the flight?

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  3. As far as I’m concerned “limited service” is a term for anything I haven’t “fixed” yet.

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  4. That’s dumb. Can’t be cheap to wire the planes for wifi and less than 1% of passangers will use it with this configuration.

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  5. Airplanes are one of the last places on earth where you can be and not hear cellphone chatter (once you are in the air anyway). Allowing WiFi will eventually allow VoIP users to make calls which will be the same as allowing cell calls. Flying is already a painful process but allowing cell/VoIP calls will be the final straw making flying unbearable. Since there won’t be an effective way to block VoIP calls, the smart airlines will either not implement WiFi, or provide an area where callers can go and not disturb other passengers. Since the latter would likely mean removing seats to accomodate this, the chances are slim to none.

    Time to find another means of long distance travel…..

    Chris

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  6. Cool pic, I really like it. Have you another?

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