JetBlue Giving All Passengers Free In-Flight 'Fly-Fi' High-Speed Wi-Fi (betanews.com) 71
BrianFagioli quotes a report from BetaNews: Today, JetBlue announced something miraculous for travelers. Every one of its passengers will have access to free in-flight high-speed Wi-Fi, which it calls "Fly-Fi." This is on every single aircraft in its fleet. In other words, if you are flying JetBlue, you get free high-speed internet "JetBlue's Fly-Fi, which clocks in at broadband speeds beating sluggish and pricey Wi-Fi offerings onboard other carriers, keeps customers connected with an Internet experience similar to what they have at home, including the ability to stream video and use multiple devices at once. The service enables JetBlue to deliver Amazon Video streaming entertainment to customers onboard to their personal devices, as well as web surfing and chatting on favorite messaging apps," says JetBlue. The vice president of JetBlue, Jamie Perry, explains, "It's 2017 and our customers expect to be connected everywhere, whether that be from the comfort of their sofa or 35,000 feet above it. That's why we're so proud that JetBlue is now the only airline to offer free, high-speed Wi-Fi, live TV and movies for all customers on every plane."
How much bandwidth per plane and how meany AP's (Score:3)
How much bandwidth per plane and how meany AP's?
On some just the free movies from an local server can buffer as lot's of people try to view them.
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It's the uplink, though.
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Free movies? Haha, that's funny. You'll get free viewings of the in-flight safety precautions video and maybe some ads for hotels or attractions at your destination but you'll pay for anything remotely entertaining. And you most certainly won't get any sort of Internet connectivity.
This is Jet Blue, not United.
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This is Jet Blue, not United.
United has had free streaming movies for some time now. Only exception is the 737s that came from Continental that have DirecTV.
https://www.united.com/web/en-... [united.com]
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Have you seen their latest effort in the race to the bottom (sub-economy seating like Spirit)??
You mean by copying what Delta rolled out three years ago?
https://pro.delta.com/content/... [delta.com]
The services are the same as Spirit - United's 'seating' is exactly the same as it's been for years.
Re:How much bandwidth per plane and how meany AP's (Score:5, Insightful)
The legacy carriers need to massively reform, particularly United.
The *are* reforming. The majority of the flying public have made it clear that the most important thing to them is low fares. They'd love blankets and pillows and hot meals and leg room but they're not willing to pay for it - They just sort by price in Expedia and book the cheapest option.
So United and Delta and everyone else are reforming to meet that need: They offer a rock-bottom product with no services, and then allow people to buy the services they want, a la carte. Want leg room? Buy up into Economy Plus. Want a hot meal? Buy it off the menu. Want to check a bag? Pay $X. Indexed to the cost of fuel + inflation, you're still paying less today even with all the a la carte items than you were 25 years ago.
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They just sort by price in Expedia and book the cheapest option.
You are ignoring one crucial detail.
Problem is that I cannot sort tickets by leg room or by some weighted function of (price+legroom).
Nor can I factor in checked bag prices -- you have to research each individual airline webpage for hidden costs. Leg room info is not given there at all!
If all you are told is price, you naturally have to choose by price.
I fly Southwest when I can, btw.
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The costs are standard by airlines for both upgrades and baggage. It's not a big enough problem to make up the difference and very similar between airlines.
Just shop by price and add a standard $x to you ticket price across the board and of you don't end up with the cheapest you'll be out by a couple of percent at the most.
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It depends on the base cost of the flight. If it's a cheap, short flight then price is the main factor. If it's longer and more expensive anyway then I'll look at it in more detail. Maybe I'm unusual but I see lots of people making the same choices.
In fact on the routes I use Virgin Atlantic was usually the cheapest, but they were also half empty most of the time because they had the least leg room and the food was awful even by airline standards. When they gave up BA became the cheapest option, but I've no
Re: How much bandwidth per plane and how meany AP' (Score:1)
No, I think the issue is regulation (extremely strict, and safe)
Costs are extremely high for airlines, but they're also the safest in the world right now.
However we agree on why prices are high, it seems to me that running an airline is difficult and getting people through the air is not cheap
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I watch free movies on Delta all the time, though you have to use their app. They usually have a decent selection of 15-20. It doesn't require purchasing an internet connection, or anything else except the ticket.
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It's based on ground stations like American and United.
No it's not. JB's internet is based on Viasat-1, the first satellite from Carlsbad-based company Viasat (see: http://fortune.com/2015/07/01/... [fortune.com]).
Viasat-2 is scheduled to launch this year, bringer more bandwidth to the skies, followed later by Viasat-3.
The only downside of satellite-based internet services is the latency of up to 600ms. Viasat partly mitigates that by using traffic acceleration, pre-fetching and caching on the UT.
Having used ground-based in-flight wifi as well as satellite based-wifi,
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Delta streams their content from a server that is on the plane. No air to ground network connection is required.
Re:How much bandwidth per plane and how meany AP's (Score:4, Funny)
I reckon the first periscoping narcissist will make the entire thing lag with buffer bloat.
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Three access points although you see them as one (FlyFi).
High-speed (Score:1)
And the other's (Score:2)
pinching pennies as usual....
This is legit !!!! (Score:4, Informative)
They've actually had this for a while now but they only recently "announced" it since they only recently got it on every single airplane they have.
I use it all the time... it's GREAT. It even works on the ground! (not every airplane but most).
The TV is satellite based LiveTV and it's always running on the LCD monitors installed on the seat. It's totally independent of WiFi so it doesn't use bandwidth.
As for the WiFi, it works for everything except certain things like TeamViewer, although I have successfully used VPN to bypass this restriction. I think it allocated more bandwidth to Amazon for streaming but even with bandwidth management, it is still 100x faster than anything on American, United, Delta or Southwest. JetBlue's system is satellite based and super fast.
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If they are blocking, throttling or prioritizing apps, protocols, ports or destinations, inspecting packets or otherwise fooling with the bits on the network... THEN IT IS NOT INTERNET!
Re:This is legit !!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're not assigning you a routable IP address and delivering connections to you, then it's not internet. It's internet's bastard child. But it's close enough for most people, most of the time.
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You are an elitist piece of shit.
I'll not apologize for valuing equality of access.
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Well 99.99% of people don't have this because they NAT away. It isn't something that is worth complaining about.
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Does it involve registration? (Score:2)
With most 'free' WiFi flight plans, the way one can access it would be by registering - be it giving them one's email, or somewhat better, giving them one's seat number. Is the same thing needed here, or is it just like accessing any real 'free' WiFi? Or do they have a password that enables this to be somewhat secure?
how it works (Score:5, Informative)
Now the cost and weight of the receivers and onboard systems for satellite internet are dropping, and more airlines are seeing it as a beneft/potential revenue center.
And of course, when you have a satellite connection, you don't have to be above a certain altitude before the reception of ground signals works reliably.
ViaSat (the provider of JetBlue's systems on their A320/321s) claims that every passenger could have 12Mbps bandwidth, though I'm sure in practice not quite that much -- and definitely blocked for voice calls.
As always, the other airlines which had installed ATG now face the cost of having been early adopters to a technology that is now being displaced, and since there is a heavy $ to refitting passenger aircraft with new hardware, it will take a while for them to change out the old systems for newer satellite based technologies.
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Actually, I am not familiar with the charged $/mb rates or royalty/license to the airline of ATG versus the satellite technology, but it would be interesting to know what numbers the airlines are weighing
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In theory, ground-based systems could be faster, but in practice the connection is typically so swamped that latency is atrocious.
How about power hookups (Score:1)
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Already a solved problem on JetBlue, they have at-seat 110V outlets and USB ports at a ratio of 1:1 for their higher class seating, and 2:3 for "core" (coach).
Also device battery life has drastically improved. I have a Chromebook that's 3 years old, and even streaming high-def video (the most energy intensive thing you can really do with one) the battery lasts 8 hours. Simple web browsing and the battery seems to last forever - I've gone up to 3 days without charging it while on vacation (extremely useful
The cap'n has turned on the electronic device lite (Score:4, Insightful)
(damn subject line limits, 1 letter too short) I want to know how long before we admit that nobody is ever going to be allowed to smoke on a domestic flight in the USA again so the airlines can paint on a "No Smoking" sign and repurpose the "No Smoking" light to one where the pilot can indicate when we're allowed to get our portable electronic devices out or when it's time to put them away again.
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I'm a flight attendant.
People TRY to smoke on airplanes all the time. Besides being equivalent to slowly killing yourself and those around you, they sometimes start fires in the lavatories when they throw cigarettes in the trash. Smoking cause a lot of diversions since smoke on an airplane is a BIG deal.
Also, people also "vape" which, besides being just as bad for you and those around you, are also considered smoking.
The lack of knowledge on behalf of the flying public is truly something to see.
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How can anyone possibly think they can get away with a cigarette on an airplane? There's no way the stink could be contained, even in the lavatory. I can often smell it when the guy in front of my in traffic is smoking and I have my windows rolled up!
Re:The cap'n has turned on the electronic device l (Score:4, Interesting)
How can anyone possibly think they can get away with a cigarette on an airplane? There's no way the stink could be contained, even in the lavatory. I can often smell it when the guy in front of my in traffic is smoking and I have my windows rolled up!
You dont understand the mind of the average smoker.
The first thing is they have no idea how much and how badly they smell. Its usually the first thing ex-smokers figure out when they quit. Like you, if someone sparks up in a large room, anywhere I can smell it within a matter of seconds.
Secondly, they've convinced themselves that it's their gord-given right to smoke when and where they please. Rules don't apply to them. It's all a conspiracy by SJWs to take away their smokes. They'll shout and scream and threaten until the police come and collect them.
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I smoked for nearly two decades -- I was always always self-conscious of the odor and for the last decade mostly smoked outside because I didn't like the odor in my house.
I would have never considered smoking on a plane or anywhere else where it was prohibited, that would have been crazy, you could never get away with it and the punishment was always severe.
About the only place I cheated where smoking was prohibited was an above ground parking ramp connected to my building. They prohibited smoking in the r
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I smoked for nearly two decades -- I was always always self-conscious of the odor and for the last decade mostly smoked outside because I didn't like the odor in my house.
I would have never considered smoking on a plane or anywhere else where it was prohibited, that would have been crazy, you could never get away with it and the punishment was always severe.
About the only place I cheated where smoking was prohibited was an above ground parking ramp connected to my building. They prohibited smoking in the ramp, but I assumed it was more of a non-smoker complaining thing, since (a) the ramp was exposed to the open air, (b) it was filled with vehicle traffic, which meant more toxic output in a minute than 10 cigarettes. Regardless, I only used it as a smoke shelter at odd hours when doing maintenance when there was essentially nobody using the facility.
Fair enough, I'm an ex-smoker myself (haven't had one in over 15 years) but in my experience for every polite smoker, there's usually 10 arrogant ones. The plus side of this is that the polite ones stand out.
The thing is, its not that the ban on smoking on aircraft isn't common knowledge. Its just that some people think they can get away with it. In 2013 I had the misfortune of watching, ashamedly, another Australian shout at an Air Asia hostess for half an hour because he was caught smoking in the toile
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"repurpose the "No Smoking" light to one where the pilot can indicate when we're allowed to get our portable electronic devices out or when it's time to put them away again"
You mean like this? https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/... [staticflickr.com]
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Many planes already have this. The last international flight I took with Iberian had a no mobile phone sign, so did my last Emirates flight early last year.
w00t (Score:1)
Perfect timing, I'm expecting to book a flight on JetBlue for my friend's wedding.
LK