You’ll soon be able to surf the Web on your BlackBerry or laptop while onboard a Lufthansa flight. The German airline said today that it’s re-introducing in-flight Wi-Fi, and that everything will be up and running by by the first half of next year.
Lufthansa didn’t say how much it would charge for the service, but it’s expected to be right around what people paid the last time it offered in-flght Wi-Fi: something like $27 per flight. If you consider that most trans-Atlantic flights are at least six hours long, then that breaks down to around $4.50 per hour. That’s not too bad, I don’t think.
The service is the handiwork of Panasonic, and uses satellites to beam the internet to the airplane.
Around half of all of Lufthansa’s airplanes should have the service installed by the first half of next year.
via Wi-Fi Net News
Considering HugesNet charges $60/month ($0.08/hour for 30 day month) for 1 Mbps satellite internet service, and based on the assumption that in flight internet shared among 20 buyers of that service wouldn’t be any faster than that.
This service turns out to be 60 times costlier than that of other satellite internet services. I don’t think that’s anywhere close to being reasonable. 10 times would’ve been bad, but acceptable.
And yes, I am comparing satellite internet service for home that you rent to satellite internet service for a seat that you rent. Fair comparison is the reason I didn’t compare it to the ultra cheap AT&T basic DSL or any other cable internet services.
Wow… !
finding myself flying in business or first class i dont really care about the pricing. but i do care about silence so thanks to lufthansa ceo mayrhuber there will be no mobile communication with your cell phone … cut to me skyping onboard with a headset and finally launching my liveshow: privatejettalk
I expect the service will drop to around $8/flight or just disappear like Microsoft Bob.
$27 is insane.
I’m sure the marketing idiots all thought those cute little phones in the seatbacks were a **GREAT** idea too. I’ve never in my 2 million miles of business travel seen anyone use one of those phones.
I could afford the $27, but here’s the problem (for them, not me). I’ve gotten by, SOMEHOW, for years without in-flight internet. For $8, I might change my ways. But at $27, they’re just being too opportunistic, and I’d refuse to use the service on principle.
$27 is way too much. But don’t forget, the U.S. Government is systematically destroying the U.S. economy and the value of the U.S. Dollar along with it; that doesn’t help either.
So is ‘THE INTERNET’ the word of today? I didn’t see any capitalized words in any other posts, but every other time it is said upfront what the word was.
I was wondering the same thing.
So? Is this it?
THE INTERNET is 2 word and it is not at the end of the article as describe and demostrated in the previous 4 articles.
Appears that they can’t follow their own rules.
nope they fixed it the be italics. Guess I need to do some heavy hunting before midnight!