We’ve been a huge proponent of Aircell’s GoGo service for months now and we’re tickled pink to learn that GoGo will finally be launching sometime next month with American Air. I’m extremely jealous that Walt got to test out the service before all of us, but that’s just the way these things work out and it makes me sad. Oh well.
Anyway, Mossberg took a test flight from San Francisco to Aircell’s home base in Colorado to test out the service. He averaged 500-600Kbps down and 300Kbps up, which isn’t blazing fast, but good enough if you ask me. It is on a plane and most of us haven’t been privy to such frivolous things in the past. Pricing is set $12.95 for flights over three hours and there’s also a flat-rate of $9.95. Also, we’ve already known this for some time, but I just wanted to reiterate the fact that Aircell’s service will not allow VoIP calls or any calls in general, so don’t think you’ll be chatting away on your transcontinental flights.
Oh, you probably want to know which cities will get first dibs on the service, don’t you? Flights going in and out of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami on Boeing 767s will get first crack. Virgin America will follow suit across their entire fleet later in the year.
You might wonder about those test speeds and say that it will bomb once everyone and their mother logs on, but Aircell claims that Mossberg’s test flight directly portrays what others will soon experience. He was logged onto the service with eight laptops and six Wi-Fi-enabled handsets. In case you were wondering.
I’d probably stay away from using the word “bomb” in this particular article.
Those speeds will be crushed once some douche trys to download a movie on BT. Then everyone is screwed. They better limit all BT traffic on the plane too.
Sucky at best. Slow, expensive and not that good. If YOU REALLY need to check your email or read the web, then go ahead. ANYTHING ELSE, forget it. Forget uploading to your office’s FTP or accessing iTunes to buy music or using IM. The service is your typical corporate-ditto-heads concoction not much different than Boingo and the rest of those WiFi leaches. Their advertising is misleading as hell.
Ports? Most are blocked.
And by the way…How good is to have WiFi in a plane where the seats have no power supply?
Oh well. Just another day in corporate America.