Wireless Internet Launched on Lufthansa FRA - IAD

JpMaxMan writes "On flight LH 418 from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, DC, Lufthansa AG began on Wednesday a three-month trial for a new onboard wireless broadband service that allows travelers to connect to the Internet some 10,000 meters in the sky."

risks and advantages?

[thesupraman]

It will be interesting to see how different countried react to this availability onboard - many countried are VERY paranoid about RF gear operating on an airliner due to fear of interferance with the onboard systems...

Personally I'm quite suprised that this is a wireless solution, and not wired onboard, as that would seem a much more 'acceptable' solution worldwide, and quite probably more secure for individuals.

I wonder how well seperated the network streams are between users? network sniffing count suddenly before very interesting ;)

Re:Cost and Speed

[targo]

I wonder how much this costs, and I'm assumming its satalite so does that affect pings for online gaming? Fragging from 10,000feet..........

If it's anything like the phone service (really crappy line quality, >2 second delay) in most airplanes then you're lucky if you get something like 4800bauds from them. You'd better forget about gaming, porn etc. right away.

Some day...

[seanadams.com]

Eventually the Internet will become an essential service in any business that's open to the public: malls, airports, schools, bus stops... just like drinking fountains, walkways, and bathrooms.

For the near future though, everyone is going to be trying to figure out how they can charge a few bucks a minute to let people with important business acces their $50/mo DSL line. I hope people just decide not to pay for these services. There's no reason why an airport/airplane/whatever can't afford to give access to a wireless AP just as a courtesy.I would definitely enjoy flying a lot more, and they'd get way more business from me by throwing stuff like this in for free.

Re:isnt that dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this a more effective way for terrorists to coordinate themselves than the airphone that's been around for years. They can just use codewords not to tip anyone off like "nice weather" = "we're in position".

Soon you can use your cellphone too?

[mni12]

If FAA is relaxing rules to allow passengers to use 802.11b transmitter while flying, there are some possibilities to get cellphones approved for flights as well. I hate when flight attendants ask you to shut down your cellphone upon departure...

Power outlets?

[intermodal]

Let's see some power outlets...I hate how my laptop runs at 1/4 speed off the battery. Then there's long flights to Japan, and the fact that my particular wireless NIC drains my battery way quicker than I care to admit...

Lufthansa cross-atlantic flights are nice...

[Tuxinatorium]

They give you great meals (especially for airplane food), free wine with your dinner, and movies playing all the time. And that wasn't even in first class. It's so cushy, no wonder they're the first to implement that wireless internet on a passenger plane.

Re:Some day...

[Patrick13]

All I can say is that I hope that they have a relatively "techy" crew member on board, because 2 out of 5 people who bring their laptops to my cyber cafe have some sort of weird configuration kink that has to be worked out -- almost always people who have installed the AOL "virus" into their system. Once that POS is in a system it doesn't want to let go.

Also, pre-OSX Macs have to have be manually configured, they can't be autoconfigured by the DHCP server.

Granted, none of this is a big deal for your typical slashdotter, but I am talking about your average business traveler who doesn't know the windows control panel from that stupid blinking banner ad that says "WARNING - Your Computer is not optimized!!!" and then trys to install "Gator" when you click on it.

If not, this is going to fail, because the flight is going to be full of pissed off business & first class passengers who can't get into their law office's exchange server.

Re:The thing about airlines that scares me

[Mister Transistor]

About 30 years ago, IIRC someone turned on a small transistor AM radio during takeoff/landing and the local oscillator in the radio emitted RF on just the right frequency to screw with the onboard Avionics. Since then it spooked the Airline industry, and they have a staunch policy about electronic devices - they don't distingush between a CD player and a radio receiver. Only fairly recently they finally decided laptops aren't radios - although they probably emit more RF than most radio receivers do today anyway, due to high clock speeds.

Re:The thing about airlines that scares me

[mikedaisey]

Replace "may interfere" with "incredibly unlikely to interfere" and you've got it. The FAA is, quite logically, a paranoid organization.