I am blogging this somewhere between Dallas and Albuquerque at 35,000 ft. I'd never had a chance to try inflight wireless before, so regardless of the extra cost, thought to try it and see how it met my expectations (or failed to).
The service is provided by GoGo which is a subsidiary of AirCell. See: http://www.gogoinflight.com
In the order of my efforts at using (and totally and completely abusing the service):
- Cost per a single flight: $5 -- hmmm, maybe for a long flight
- Googling -- WIN
- Facebooking -- WIN
- Streaming must using Pandora -- FAIL (it just fails to work at all)
- Emailing from 35,000 feet -- WIN
- Text Chat -- WIN (Lunch on Tuesday Tim!)
- VPN to work -- WIN
- SSH over VPN --- FAIL (uhg...totally not usable)
- Netflix -- WIN (wait, WTF?...I only watched about 2 minutes but the buffer was keeping up.)
- Ok..gotta try this...Hulu -- FAIL (It loads, but buffering fail ... the Netflix thing had to be a fluke)
- Pandora (2nd attempt) -- double FAIL
- YouTube -- WIN (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHjFxJVeCQs)
- Blogging -- WIN
I ran a couple of DSL Reports speed tests while in the air. Given that Pandora didn't load at first, but then Netflix did, I think there is some definite differences in service quality depending on where you are at and whether there are Aircell towers nearby. So, basic service is pretty consistent, but don't expect to do any streaming media for awhile as things were definitely not consistent. This is significantly better than old-school dialup, but has far to go to get the speeds we are used to at home.
Ok...we are going to land...time to go. This thing shuts off at 10,000 feet. Bye!
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