The airplane seems like the ideal venue for Wi-Fi, with a captive audience immobilized with their laptops and smartphones for hours. But it seems that Wi-Fi doesn’t consider the airplane the ideal venue for its deployment. “Getting Wi-Fi on flights has gotten easier,” reports Alison Sider in The Wall Street Journal. “Making money from airborne Internet is another matter.”
In my latest experience—back on May 21, 2017—getting online was anything but easy. I purchased 30 minutes of Wi-Fi time for $7.50 but never could connect. The customer service representative—probably a bot—that I contacted convinced me to accept a limited-time voucher instead of a refund, which I accepted but never got around to using. And on a flight earlier this month, the flight attendants offered several apologies for the Wi-Fi system being down.
From my perspective, a Wi-Fi-free zone has its benefits. As long as I have my research notes stored on my local drive, I can write an article on a cross-country flight without the distraction of constantly checking the news or answering emails. However, I don’t want to enlist the airlines and in-flight Wi-Fi providers as enforcers of my distraction-free time.
I’m certainly a fan of the technology. Back in 2010 I had the opportunity to spend a day at the headquarters of Aircell, the company that became Gogo Inc., on the occasion of the deployment of its Gogo Inflight Internet service on its 1000th aircraft—a Delta Air Lines DC-9. As I wrote at the time, “The rate of deployment is remarkable, considering that Aircell’s commercial in-flight Internet initiative began from scratch as a new business that would complement the company’s traditional role as a provider of in-flight telephony services to business-aviation customers. The initiative got a boost when Aircell won rights to spectrum once allocated to first-generation Advanced Mobile Phone Service ATG (air-to-ground) voice telephony.”
Now, Sider in the Journal reports that Gogo Inc. operates half the world’s in-flight Wi-Fi networks but has never turned a profit. She quotes Oakleigh Thorne, Gogo’s chief executive, as saying, “We weren’t really focused on the user experience in the aircraft. Now we’re very focused on that.”
Sider writes that Gogo has faced delays in installing a satellite system that would deliver faster Wi-Fi than the cellular system it has been using. “Other in-flight Wi-Fi providers have struggled too,” she adds. “Airlines have failed to convince passengers to pay enough for Wi-Fi to cover steep installation and operating costs.” She reports that equipping an aircraft for the latest high-speed connections can cost up to $500,000, according to Valour Consultancy.
She quotes a frequent Delta flyer as saying service drastically improved about six months ago. “But Gogo and other Wi-Fi providers have struggled to overcome a history of spotty service and convince people to pay for something they now get free at other businesses, from cafes to hotels,” Sider writes. “Less than 10% of passengers on most flights pay for Wi-Fi, according to Valour. On flights where Wi-Fi is free, Valour said usage jumps to about 40%.”
She quotes Delta chief executive Ed Bastian as saying, “Eventually, we’re going to have to do it at a price point that makes sense in the air. I mean, where else do you pay for Wi-Fi other than in an airplane, right?”
