April 6th, 2010
2:34
GoGo In-Flight WiFi Review
Last week I finally got a chance to experience in-flight internet via GoGo WiFi. I had been hearing about this service from my buddies for several months, but was never lucky enough to be on a plane that actually had it. My main carrier is Delta. Delta acquired Northwest Airlines and while they now operate as a single company and make no mention of NWA anymore, the former NWA planes seem to be last on the list to get upgraded with WiFi. So I waited. Not much of a choice when you live near Detroit. It's a Delta hub.
I'm online!
How much does it cost?
I went for the $9.95 option for now since I don't know how often I'll be on a flight that actually has it in the next 30 days? Once this is widespread I could see going with the 30 day pass to save $$$.
How fast is it?
While the speed test from SpeakEasy.net (my favorite testing site) doesn't show this connection to be blazing fast, it's actually quite speedy in actual use.
SlingPlayer works!
OK, this is extremely cool! I was even able to connect to my Slingbox and watch anything that was recorded on my DVR. Wow! No more having to watch the same movies over and over again on the plane 
In theory I could watch a live broadcast of LOST (which comes on in 30 minutes) instead of watching it later.
Great to have options. It will also be interesting to see what restrictions they put on Apps like this that suck bandwidth going forward. VoIP apps are already prohibited.
Although my App did technically work and make a call, the sound quality was so bad that it wasn't worth it. I'm glad that in-flight calls are prohibited. I just wanted to see if they didn't anything technically to block the ports?
Sanctuary or Workplace
The one thing I could count on when I flew on long flights was that I could get a lot of work done, especially writing without any "distractions". No email to worry about. No instant messages, no wondering what my friends are doing on Facebook or Twitter, because I was off the grid. Now that Delta says that they'll have 100% of their fleet upgraded with WiFi by the end of the year, I wonder how this will impact my time in the air? Sure I could simply switch off WiFi and work, but the temptation to know what's going on is simply to great. So while I've been waiting for this day to come for quite sometime, it's a mixed blessing. We'll see how it goes. On the other hand I wrote this post in the air! The other thing I have to consider is that while I can work on flight that doesn't have WiFi, I usually spend quite a bit of time once I land getting caught up anyway.
Also being able to power my MacBook Pro with my HyperMac external battery now becomes even more important.
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It was fun while it lasted, but on two flights yesterday, the native PC Slingbox application was blocked on Delta flights… It’s ok though, I mean sure, I wanted to watch the NHL playoffs and the NBA playoffs, but Delta was playing “Dear John,” and I really didn’t get enough of it over 18 of the past 18 flights this month. Anyways, I was still able to connect to the web app at http://watch.slingbox.com, but after just under two minutes, my bandwidth was throttled back to less than 100k, making it pretty much unwatchable. This was on nearly empty evening and late night flights with few other passengers using laptops. Direct connection to the slingbox, no proxy. Any OpenVPN software also appear to be blocked, within one minute of VPN connection I got the boot from the service.
So it’s still a great service for business travelers, but it’s clear (and they state specifically in their terms) that they’re making every effort to ensure that bandwidth isn’t hogged by media streaming. When I travel for work, sky time is my time… I cherish those few hours with zero responsibility and no contact. For me, inflight Wifi would be great for movies, music, sling box, etc… but it’s clear that’s not a reality quite yet.