WiFi in Flight Regulations may be hampering more rapid deployments

Travel Weekly reports that In Flight WiFi remains a very desirable amenity for travelers but is causing some headaches for carriers as they navigate the maze of regulations involved in WiFi enabling of commercial aircraft:

Passengers' growing appetite for electronic gadgets and WiFi access is creating problems for airlines eager to sate that appetite. The challenge lies in enforcing myriad company policies and federal laws covering wireless communications.

As airlines test and equip their planes for in-flight WiFi, they have to figure out how to catch people using prohibited devices (or approved devices at the wrong time) with no practical means of detecting radio-based technologies that can operate out of sight in briefcases, carry-on bags or even pockets.

More In Flight WiFi Launches

Another in flight WIFI service is available and the New York Times is reporting that it is not allowing Skype calls:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/business/14essay.html

I don't see this as a big deal though it's not clear to me why they'd care much. Perhaps a security issue because it's easier to screen text such that TSA could identify suspicious activity more easily using automated routines at the ISP level.

In any case this is a great boon to business travelers who now can have uptime throughout the flight, especially at the critical time right before and after key meetings and conferences.

Delta deploys WIFI across their entire fleet

Bravo for Delta as in "Delta Bravo, we have WIFI!"

Delta has deployed wireless internet broadband across their entire fleet. The service is not free, but at $9.95 - $12.95 this seems to be a reasonably priced amenity, especially for business travellers who need to keep in touch as they fly to and from important conferences and meetings.

This does raise some issues about security and I'll be interested to hear how those are addressed as we move forward. Constant, silent, real time communication has not been easily available to travellers but will be now.

DEN Denver Airport - Free WIFI Throughout the Airport

Kudos to DEN Denver International Airport for their free excellent WIFI which only requires you to view a 30 second video spot before access. Shame on BWI Baltimore for having advertised (and tried?) free WIFI but now offering only paid hotspots at 9.99 per day.

Let's see - would I rather watch a 30 second spot or pay 9.99? Getting "paid" $10 per 30 secs is like getting paid $1200 per hour, so rather than be annoyed with the Zappos ad at DIA I'm happy to have watched it and thanks for paying me (relative to BWI's system) $1200 per hour while I did.

Jetblue offering in-flight email

Over at Webguild blog, Reshma is reporting that Jet Blue will offer in flight email services via WIFI. This is great news, coming on the heels of AA's in flight WIFI experiments.

I think airlines will find that in flight WIFI is a great, great service to offer on any flights, especially those that last more than an hour. An hour is often enough time to catch up on emails and not waste a day of travel time after which you are buried again. Good luck to Jet Blue and AA with these WIFI in-flight experiments!

AA to provide on board WIFI

A gigantic hat tip to American Airlines AA.com for the decision to provide WIFI to passengers in flight. Crunch Gear reports today that this plan is in the works and it appears WIFI on AA flights will be available soon.

Laptop and Sprint phone use in China

For the China trip to Biejing Airport code is PEK! Shanghai, Xiamen, and probably Hong Kong, I'm starting to plan how to get WIFI and/or use of my cell phone. Flyertalk has a forum page listing some of the challenges. People there suggest that a US Sprint modem card won't work because it's a different MHZ rating, though there may be China cards available. Also says Sprint has no agreement with China for mobile serve (this seems odd - I'm skeptical of that).

One suggests the hotel is likely to have power adapters but I'm guessing this is only in upscale places. During my 2003 trip to France and UK I would up jerry-rigging a plug adapter I bought in Paris for my laptop, chipping away until I got a way to plug it in. This worked partly because most laptop power supply adapters work at 240 and 120v.

Looks like a lot more research will be needed here. I'm shopping for a lightweight laptop so I can blog this trip.

Free WiFi a winner at Regional Airports

Jaunt is noting how free WiFi is taking off at many regional airports. This even as large airports still try to eek out a few bucks charging relatively large fees to connect to their WiFi networks (usually 9.95 for the day). I don't have data to back this up, but I'm confident that the big players would do well to offer free ad supported WiFi. I simply don't pay for the WiFi when travelling, struggling instead to read my email over the Treo rather than pony up ten bucks just to surf and pick up some email for a few hours between flights.

I'm guessing enough other folks do that same that the airports would be far better off looking to the potentially high revenues they could obtain using open networks with some sort of interstitial advertising injected every 5 minutes or so, or even the less intrusive "menu" system where people would browse in some sort of window surrounded with relevant ads. If I ran a nice lounge at a major airport in Concourse A you can bet your iPhone I'd want to run ads for this in Concourse B, and the people I'd want to target would be those who are reading up email or surfing away, killing time before flights.

So hey big Airports, get with the program!