AT&T Won't Do In-Flight Wi-Fi After All 35
jfruh writes In-flight Wi-Fi services tend to be expensive and disappointingly slow. So when AT&T announced a few months ago that it was planning on getting into the business, with customer airlines being able to connect to AT&T's LTE network instead of slow satellite services, the industry shook. But now AT&T has announced that, upon further review, they're not going to bother.
AT&T is slipping (Score:1)
You think they would have at least bilked the government for a few billion in tax dollars for before not bothering to do anything.
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No, they will sue the government if it ever tries to compete
Same thing here in Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
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Here in the US (at least near a major city), LTE is last gen tech.
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Here in the US (at least near a major city), LTE is last gen tech.
This. Now, with "XLTE" I can blow past my monthly data cap in 13 minutes of full speed downloading! The future has arrived.
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We're way ahead here, I can blow through my cap in about 45 seconds!
That's what she said?
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Here in the US (at least near a major city), LTE is last gen tech.
This. Now, with "XLTE" I can blow past my monthly data cap in 13 minutes of full speed downloading! The future has arrived.
I don't really even understand the point in XLTE anyways. I can pull 50mbit on my LTE. Why would anyone need faster over a cell phone?
My speeds range from 15 to 65mbits. I would guess average around 20.
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Here in the US (at least near a major city), LTE is last gen tech.
This. Now, with "XLTE" I can blow past my monthly data cap in 13 minutes of full speed downloading! The future has arrived.
I don't really even understand the point in XLTE anyways. I can pull 50mbit on my LTE. Why would anyone need faster over a cell phone?
My speeds range from 15 to 65mbits. I would guess average around 20.
XLTE isn't really a thing, it's Verizon marketing-speak for extra bands of regular LTE spectrum with which they make data move really really fast. The difference is really noticeable, but only because most of their LTE markets are saturated and the extra bands are needed to maintain true LTE speeds.
AT&T (Score:2)
Gee, AT&T would have fit right in then. Nobody does crappy, overpriced internet service like them.
Maybe Comcast will do in-flight wifi instead?
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Sounds like a classic FUD move, by a huge player with vested interests in the Dumb Pipe market.
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Maybe Comcast will do in-flight wifi instead?
The cable costs alone would be prohibitive.
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Maybe Comcast will do in-flight wifi instead?
The cable costs alone would be prohibitive.
It would bring a whole new meaning to the term "tethering".
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Yes it's slow, but it's usable as long as it's over $5 (seems to be the right price to limit demand). I consider $8 for a 5 hours not a terrible price at all, about 5% of a cheap tick, or 2% of a last minute one, for immense improvement of flight quality. Though when it used to be $5 on southwest, I always marveled they made it not worth the five dollars, the recent price increase brings it in line with others.
It used to be worth it, until they made the seats so damn close together that laptop use is excruciating unless you're in first class. Heaven forbid the sod in front of you reclines his seat, in which case there literally isn't room for the laptop to fully open unless you suck your chest in. Nah, I would rather get my work done in the relative comfort of the terminal, and use the in flight time for catching up on podcasts or reading.
Re: I don't know that I'd call it expensive and sl (Score:1)
I meant worth it as entertainment (op here, I haven't figured out how to post a too level comment on the mobile site, and the main site doesn't login after typing). There's definitely not enough space to do work, but for fucking around in places such as this on a tablet or a phone it's great.
By the time you're allowed to take your laptop out, you practically need to put it away anyway.
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By the time you're allowed to take your laptop out, you practically need to put it away anyway.
None of my flights are that quick. I'm driving if the travel distance is that short.
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I found my cross country trips (with change in Denver) had a lot of dead time between take-off to smooth enough air for a laptop and landing.
I am a definite 12 hours or less drive person though, because I can pack sloppy.
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Also, the airplane internet is too lame to work on, even when it's well worth it, if I'm going to do work, it would have to be local, or just emailing.
Not going to bother (Score:1)
But they will find the money to sue the government if it ever tries to provide the service.
LTE speed limit (Score:3)
I don't know exactly how this would have worked anyway.
It's been a while since I worked on LTE (call processing, not RF or hardware or even baseband), but I thought that with UTRAN there was a 350 km/h "speed limit" (perhaps up to 500 km/h under certain circumstances) with motion relative to the base station.
(Now that I spent 5 seconds thinking about it, I suppose the sine of the angle (from base station to aircraft, relative to vertical) would reduce the velocity that the plane was moving away from the base station... I think?)
I'm sure there are many other effects such as transmit power, interference, fading & multipath, etc. Sheesh I'm getting rusty...
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Yeah, and that's about half the cruising sped of a modern aircraft. They would probably have to use a modified LTE with wider guard bands on either side of the expected frequency range, and they'd probably need to modify the radio firmware on both ends to