Why In-Flight Wi-Fi Is Still Slow and Expensive 194
An anonymous reader writes: Let's grant that having access to the internet while on an airplane is pretty amazing. When airlines first began offering it several years ago, it was agonizingly slow and somewhat pricey as well. Unfortunately, it's only gotten more expensive over the years, and the speeds are still frustrating. This is in part because the main provider of in-flight internet, Gogo, knows most of its regular customers will pay for it, regardless of cost. Business travelers with expense accounts don't care if it's $1 or $10 or $50 — they need to stay connected. Data speeds haven't improved because Gogo says the scale isn't big enough to do much infrastructure investment, and most of the hardware is custom-made. A third of Gogo-equipped planes can manage 10 Mbps, while the rest top out at 3 Mbps. There's hope on the horizon — the company says a new satellite service should enable 70 Mbps per plane by the end of the year — but who knows how much they'll charge for an actual useful connection.
Problem with the solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:5, Informative)
Well no, even when travelling on business all my docs are on a web-server, often with images. Also, VNC is an essential part of my job, in that I cannot run the sims on a puny IT issued laptop, and need my desktop or datacenter to see waves and do any form of debug. But wifi as it exists makes this painful.
Certainly youtube/netflix/etc. would be nice, but at this point the I'd consider mail, web and vnc as "essential".
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe he means "play the Sims" and debug something else.
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Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:4, Funny)
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What he says is trying to say is "run the sims", but what he actually does is "play the Sims"
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
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youtube/netflix/etc. would be nice
I wonder if they could get Netflix onboard and have a (perhaps incomplete) Netflix cache onboard the aircraft. They've got the technology [netflix.com] to enable ISPs to cache their content, after all. (They must have their reasons for not just using nice, cacheable HTTP to distribute encrypted blobs of their content. This is what Steam does, I believe.)
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I don't know how much they pay for the in-flight entertainment now, but I bet Netflix could undercut them (especially if they provided a limited catalogue to everyone and a less limited catalogue to their customers. One interesting option would be for Netflix customers to indicate their flight number and select things to be cached before boarding, while the plane is at the gate).
That would be too awesome of an idea and since the airlines seem to be in a never ending death spiral of passenger discomfort it will never be implemented. It wouldn't surprise to to find out that airlines are actually paid to show some of the crap they have.
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Airlines have to show cut down worse than TV versions. Because it's a captive audience. Someone's kid could hear a bad word.
Re: Problem with the solution? (Score:3)
I've been on those planes.
Yes, the service is pretty good - a lot of their cross-country flights are being upgraded to those thinner plastic seats to cram more passengers in and there's no seat-back screen anymore. Only problem is you have your phone, pad, or computer and no in-seat power in cattle class.
On a recent flight from FRA to LAX, the aging 747 had this installed and you had the screens in business class and the wifi on your device with 2-3x the selection. Better than 2 years ago when they had CRT
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I tried using this the other day... It doesn't support Windows 10 or Linux, regardless of the browser. United's solution requires you to install a custom plugin into IE or use Safari. On two trans-continental flights, I couldn't get it to work -- and I had time to burn.
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Jesus. Sometimes "on the plane" means you're on a fucking plane, and can't do some things.
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Jesus. Sometimes "on the plane" means you're on a fucking plane, and can't do some things.
Which just means you have to do them later. Why waste the time? Personally, when I traveled a lot I tried to schedule tasks for when I was on the plane. It was a great opportunity to get a block of interrupt-free time. Better for reading than typing, though, so not great for coding. Unless I knew I was going to be in first class.
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I think the problem here is that yes, you don't want to waste the time, but you (and few others) are willing to pay what it would really cost to offer fast airborne bandwidth.
A few Mbps are really quite adequate for 99% of the users that *need* in-air connectivity (or simply want it to prevent being bored, like me with IRC and web browsing). If people want to do heavy VNC work or video streaming on board aircraft, they're going to have to pay more than $20 for it. It's that simple.
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I can see where the confusion comes from... Packed-in together with a bunch of people, an extremely noisy environment. Hell, an airplane is a slight improvement over many office spaces. And if you couldn't be engrossed with work, you might have to think about how you've crammed-in a noisy metal tube like sardines, with no personal space, no leg-room, no comfort to speak of at all.
And don't call me "Jesus".
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You're doing work on the plane. I consider that analogous to watching videos, etc. If you want to do that on a plane, maybe you should download videos to watch/files you want to work on ahead of time (I do.).
A business traveler staying connected is an entirely different use case. There, the timeliness of communication is of paramount importance. It's also a place where latency will be annoying, but not prohibitive.
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VNC sucks. You'd get vastly better performance out of ANY OTHER remote display protocol... Try NX, Citrix, or RDP if you must, but get rid of VNC if at all possible.
VNC is useful on KVMs and other dumb devices that don't have any idea what they're going to display, but locally, on a computer, it makes no sense unless nothing better is available.
Latency not a deal breaker (Score:5, Insightful)
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Skype in text mode (Score:2)
the last thing anyone on a plane wants is some asshole nearby using Skype.
Even in text mode? The vast majority of my Skype time over the past three months has been with text, not voice, and definitely not video. I'm mostly using it as a successor to MSN Messenger.
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I don't think latency is a real issue for text mode.
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Agreed. My issue was largely with Luthair's assertion that anybody using Skype software is necessarily an anus.
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VNC (Score:3)
Latency is only really an issue with certain applications like on-line gaming or VOIP.
Or remote desktop solutions such as VNC, RDP, or X11.
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Geez man, VNC? X11? I cannot think of a slower remote desktop solution.
RDP or, if possible, ICA or RGS are way better solutions for remote desktop.
RDP servers on not-Windows (Score:2)
For someone switching from VNC to RDP to access Linux boxes, is xrdp [xrdp.org] any good?
For someone switching from VNC to RDP to access OS X boxes, is iRAPP [coderebel.com] worth $79?
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Actually, for web browsing, latency is the big issue. You receive one file, which instructs you to download 10 other files. 3 of those instruct you to download another 23 files, and 4 of those instruct you to grab another 8. That's 4 layers of two way latency just to get the page to render. If your latency is 500ms, that's 2 second page load times alone. The time to actually send the text meanwhile was very low.
And that's for a relatively simple web page.
Long story short - web makes way too many sepera
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Between loading 50 billion off-site tracking/utility scripts and having a bunch of interactive page elements that don't load their content until you click/scroll/mouseover...just browsing HTTP sites can still be a huge pain with high latency.
I'm sure someone will come and argue that "well that's now how we should be building the internet and sites should be designed better"...but that doesn't help me much when I am on an airplane with s
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actually latency is a HUGE issue for ALL internet connections. It's know as Bandwidth Delay Product and high latency links create problems with TCP window sizing, such that a typical internet link using geostationary satellites is limited to under 200Kbps. So that 20MB Power Point presentation is going to take about 15 minutes to download.
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Why do you automatically assume that "satellite" means latency? Only GEO has the latency problem. They could be using a LEO satellite constellation, in exchange for allowing the use of fixed antennas. Even Iridium is going that way, as they replace their whole constellation over the next few years with stuff that can do high-speed digital. (Iridium-classic is basically analog-voice-only.)
Because on my last trip on United, latency varied between 800ms at the lowest, up to 2100ms. Though bandwidth was pretty consistent at around 3mbit - 6mbit. Upstream bandwidth was a consistent .01mbit.
Makes interactive SSH sessions nearly impossible.
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I got off a plane from Dubai to Düsseldorf about 30 hours ago and can definitely tell you that latency is not an issue - it's waiting 5 pages for a page to load that's an issue. Latency due to satellite is ~2 seconds in general. Throughput seems to be the limiting factor...
Re:Problem with the solution? (Score:4, Informative)
One would think that latency is much less of an issue when you are 9 km closer to the satellite, with nothing obstructing the Fresnel zone.
When the satellite is somewhere between 750km (for LEO) to 40,000km (for Geosynchronous), 9km doesn't make much difference.
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JetBlue FTW (Score:5, Informative)
All true with the exception of JetBlue who provides some of the fastest in-flight WiFi for FREE. I've streamed Netflix on JetBlue flights without any problem.
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In Norwegian's case, it looks like they make up some of the cost on PPV movies. I'm guessing JetBlue does something similar.
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The featured article addresses that. Gogo tied up certain airlines with decade-long exclusive contracts. JetBlue instead signed with ViaSat, which entered the market later with a more affordable service that the airline can just bundle into the ticket price.
Gogo very good choice for a company name ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Or get a second wifi card in your laptop that supports AP mode and set up a rogue AP that routes to the real one. Wait for someone to connect to it, pay the fee, and then you and anyone else who connects to the rogue one gets free inte
Slow is why it's expensive. (Score:2)
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Hey if you think that you can provide a better, cheaper service, you're free to do so.
Unless Gogo has all your potential clients tied up for a decade with exclusive contracts.
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Simple law of supply and demand. When the supply is small (relative to demand), you keep the price high
Yes, that's the basics of it, but I would bet money that if we look at a traffic graph, the link isn't always 100% full, the QoS is probably sophomoric, and the $50/flight pricing does not achieve Pareto efficiency.
A simple price rationing scheme would improve both customer satisfaction and profitability - charge $50 for priority access and $5 for best-effort access, so both the corporate raider and the te
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They'd make the same money per flight if 10 people paid $1 or if 1 person paid $10. They just want to keep it greedy.
Just the opposite, in fact - they want to keep it "fair" and that's the whole problem. Reality is you get what you pay for. This is true for loads of gravel to bandwidth.
But Americans are programmed to demand "fairness" and "equality" in all things and revolt when given pricing tiers that reflect reality. The most workable option, at present, would probably be to have SSID's for "First Cla
Inelastic demand (Score:2)
If they lowered the price, you'd bet your ass more people would pay it. They'd make the same money per flight if 10 people paid $1 or if 1 person paid $10.
You're assuming that demand is unit elastic. The featured article states that demand is less elastic than what you imply. This allows Gogo to increase revenue by raising the price level, as it doesn't cause a proportional number of people to not buy.
Am I the only person... (Score:5, Insightful)
... who still thinks being able to get a wireless internet link in an aircraft doing 600mph at 35K feet is pretty fucking amazing. I can't believe people complain about the bandwidth - they should be grateful this tech exists at all.
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... who still thinks being able to get a wireless internet link in an aircraft doing 600mph at 35K feet is pretty fucking amazing. I can't believe people complain about the bandwidth - they should be grateful this tech exists at all.
Yeah, but the problem is that the service offered today is exactly the same as the service that was offered in 2008. There has been basically zero progress over the course of over seven years, and the price has been steadily going up for that service.
Imagine if computers had the same capabilities, the same CPU speed, the same RAM, the same form factor, the same monitor resolutions, as they did in 2008 but cost a lot more. Who would still be buying them? (Basically the same people who buy airplane wi-fi s
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I can't. Gogo has been granted an exclusive Air-To-Ground (ATG) 3Ghz broadband frequency license by the FCC.
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3 GHz, HDTV, human hands, and Secure Boot (Score:2)
Imagine if computers had the same capabilities, the same CPU speed, the same RAM, the same form factor, the same monitor resolutions, as they did in 2008
CPU speed hasn't improved much since the 3 GHz wall, and PC monitor resolutions have flattened out with the economies of scale of 1366x768 and 1920x1080 panels. And the form factor for a PC with a preinstalled multi-window OS hasn't changed much because adult human hands haven't changed much. There were 9 to 10 inch netbooks in 2008, and there are 10 inch detachable laptops in 2015.
but cost a lot more
An industry-wide move toward Secure Boot could easily lead to exactly this. As of Windows 10, PC makers are allowed to lock dow
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"Imagine if computers had the same capabilities, the same CPU speed, the same RAM, the same form factor, the same monitor resolutions, as they did in 2008 but cost a lot more. Who would still be buying them?"
Yes we would. We get value from them. Bigger and faster is nice, but we wouldn't stop using computers if they stopped getting better. My car is a 1999 model but still gets 37mph, can go 100+mph, AC/radio works, and is drivable. New cars aren't appreciably any faster, larger, more fuel economic, or bett
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No, actually, I can't. It's not satellites that are the problem. Gogo has been granted an exclusive Air-To-Ground (ATG) 3Ghz broadband frequency license by the FCC.
They are charging money for this (Score:2)
... who still thinks being able to get a wireless internet link in an aircraft doing 600mph at 35K feet is pretty fucking amazing. I can't believe people complain about the bandwidth - they should be grateful this tech exists at all.
Of course it is amazing. That doesn't mean it can't be better and we all know it can be better. I remember being amazed at how fast a 9600 baud modem was. But technology progresses and our expectations along with it. I don't doubt for a moment that they can make it faster and more reliable.
As for being "grateful", they are charging a lot of money to use this tech. If they were providing it for free you might have an argument but they aren't. Is it technically difficult? Sure but I don't really care
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What relevancy does the "rest of the airline experience" have? Other than setting the service floor at the "not exactly amazing" level? You aren't going to get on a flight just because your internet connection experience is sooooo wonderful, are you?
Value for money (Score:2)
What relevancy does the "rest of the airline experience" have?
I should think that would be obvious if you've been on a plane in the last 10 years. Do you enjoy sitting in a cramped seat after being fondled by TSA? Do you really think $15 for a few hours of (usually) bad laggy internet access is a good deal? I'm paying a lot of money to get on that airplane so yeah I have an opinion about what I'm getting for my money.
You aren't going to get on a flight just because your internet connection experience is sooooo wonderful, are you?
I'm not going to pretend that paying $15 for 3 hours of slow internet access is a good deal or that it makes the flight somehow into a lovely experien
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"As for being "grateful", they are charging a lot of money to use this tech. If they were providing it for free you might have an argument but they aren't"
No one is forcing you to pay for it. TBH if you can't go a single flight without net access then you probably need therapy.
Not impressed and certainly not "grateful" (Score:2)
No one is forcing you to pay for it.
Who said anyone was? The post I responded to said I "should be grateful" to have it. I disagree. I would be grateful if it were provided gratis. But since they are charging money I have an opinion about the value for money and I'm not terribly impressed and certainly not "grateful".
I've purchased wifi service on a round trip flight with four legs, partly out of curiosity and partly because it was a long flight. It worked very slowly on two of the legs with periodic dropouts. It worked sort of ok on on
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFsOUbZ0Lr0
.
Bandwidth vs latency (Score:2)
X11, RDP, VNC (Score:2)
Few things outside of internet gaming and VOIP require low latency, neither of which should be done on a plane.
Examples of these few things include X11 to your applications at work, RDP to your applications at work, and VNC to your applications at work. Is there a good reason why none of these "should be done on a plane"?
Tunnel them (Score:2)
X11 and VNC aren't bastions of internet security at the best of times
Even when IP-restricted to allow connections only over an SSH or VPN tunnel?
Virgin Atlantic's 787s (Score:5, Interesting)
I regularly fly with Virgin Atlantic, and their new 787s have a fantastic wifi service courtesy of T-Mobile. I worked a problem during a recent flight from London to DC spending the entire flight remotely logged-in to remote applications over Citrix XenApp. Latency was poor (you cannae change the laws of physics) but consistent and throughput was perfectly fine.
The cost? £15 for unlimited data for whole the flight. Even better, on my second trip I discovered the service is included in my monthly iPass Mobile Connect subscription, so my incremental cost was zero!
I understand they're using ka-band satellites with approximately 70Mbps per channel. I guess they can always run multiple links if usage takes-off.
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If you bill or are paid hourly that flight of otherwise dead time could earn you 9 hours of pay...
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Declare SSID's expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
When setting up an access point, it should be possible to designate it as "expensive", and by default devices should adhere to this and try to limit unnecessary data usage. I get annoyed when I use my phone as a hot spot and discover that my computer has fetched upgrades, my other phone has downloaded a bunch of podcasts, and so on. It would also allow me to keep a backup wireless SSID running permanently, knowing that the devices will go for the cheap SSID first.
I bet that quite a bit of bandwidth usage on planes is due to phones thinking they are switching from expensive (but actually dirt cheap) 3G/4G to cheap (but actually really expensive) wifi.
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I believe some Android devices have a similar option but I don't think it is in the core OS but rather something that a few OEMs have added.
Android 4 and 5 support this (Score:2)
I believe some Android devices have a similar option but I don't think it is in the core OS but rather something that a few OEMs have added.
It's in Android 4.4 and 5.1 on my first-generation Nexus 7 (grouper) tablet, so I'm pretty sure it's part of the core OS. Android on Nexus devices is pretty much just the core OS and Google Play. You need to go to the list of SSIDs (can't give exact wording; my tablet isn't in front of me right now) and mark one of them as metered (may be called "Mobile hotspot" in Android 4).
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The one flight I took with in-flight WiFi, on a Norwegian plane, blocked access to the Google Play store, App store, etc (and this was written clearly when I accepted the T&Cs). Presumably, for exactly this reason.
It was a little annoying, as the purpose of connecting to WiFi was to install a currency converter app.
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currency converter app ? Look up exchange rate of country you're about to land in, do math while there. Why is that hard ?
Because Europe, and because I don't like dividing by 13.5.
Four friends, renting a holiday house together, from three countries, in a fourth. We were paying for things in SEK, we wanted to know the cost in CHF, GBP and DKK (perhaps surprisingly, no-one was from the eurozone). An app is quicker than using the calculator.
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That requires a data connection, so international roaming, and is slower than an app which caches all exchange rates and updates (or so it seems) once a day.
I don't see what's wrong with an app. Converting currencies is something I do fairly often, probably for about 10 weeks a year (holiday + business travel).
Re:Declare SSID's expensive (Score:4, Informative)
"When setting up an access point, it should be possible to designate it as "expensive", and by default devices should adhere to this and try to limit unnecessary data usage"
Android has a feature (settings / data usage / menu / mobile hotspots) to do exactly that. Android also seems to detect if it is tethered to another Android phone but I'm not sure how that works. iPhones certainly don't recognize Android hotspots, as a I learned when my friend's iPhone downloaded 50 MB roaming data in 3 minutes when she just wanted to check her email.
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Both Android and Windows already support this.
On Android go to Settings->Data Usage->menu->Mobile Hotspots and select the networks you want to mark as being "mobile", which will make Android limit data use over them the same way it would over your mobile connection.
On Windows 10, 8 and I think 7 you simply need to mark the selected wifi network as "metered". You can do it by right clicking on the network in the network list when you connect to it. Windows will then limit its use.
All we want is email (Score:3)
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All of my employers have reimbursed wifi on approved business trips. I even had one reimbuse wifi on a cruise because I had to be working with a contractor. I think it depends on exactly what the circumstances are and what you can talk your boss in to. I do at least make good on my use, and keep it for work and get their moneys worth.
Feedback loop (Score:2)
Data speeds haven't improved because Gogo says the scale isn't big enough to do much infrastructure investment, and most of the hardware is custom-made.
The reason the "scale isn't big enough" is because they're charging so damn much for it. I'm perhaps not a great test-case, because I refuse to pay for wifi anywhere and everywhere, but last time I was on a delta flight they wanted $8 for an hour. ONE hour. They wanted some outrageous price for the entire flight ($20 or more, I don't remember the exact number). For those of us who only fly a couple of times a year, the monthly and yearly passes don't make any sense either.
The only argument that I wo
Not Enough (Score:2)
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Commercial, passenger, aviation has cost issues for just about everything. WiFi might be easier to cost control than most other items but maybe the real answer is to have a lot less passenger aviation. Companies paying to fly people all about on business does not bode well for the cost of the product to the buyer.
I fly about on business because it gets stuff done. The cost is moot compared to a 10 billion dollar factory going idle.
Because Everything To Do With Air Travel... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is slow and expensive?
I'm sure I'm not the first person in the world to have come up with the idea of putting a Dollar Store in an airport. Since I've never owned or operated a retail outlet of any kind, though, I can imagine there's some sort of prohibition to the idea that I haven't thought of yet. But by and large, the reason we don't see this is it would probably piss in someone's corn flakes that someone, in some airport somewhere, would get something for cheap.
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I'm sure I'm not the first person in the world to have come up with the idea of putting a Dollar Store in an airport. Since I've never owned or operated a retail outlet of any kind, though, I can imagine there's some sort of prohibition to the idea that I haven't thought of yet
The reason you don't see dollar stores at airports or malls, is that they operate at very low margins. If they sell you stuff at $1, they would simply not be able to afford rent at a premium spot like that. There is no law against it, it is just not economical.
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I figured something like that had to be the reason.
Your business plan will fail because... (Score:2)
I'm sure I'm not the first person in the world to have come up with the idea of putting a Dollar Store in an airport
The airport doesn't want you and the rent will break you.
Instead of setting rental prices by square foot, the entities that control airport retail --- which include the Port Authority, the airlines and management firms like Hudson that act on behalf of owners --- set a base rent monthly and then increase it once retailers hit specified sales figures. Sources declined to give those base rents.
One analyst told The Real Deal that a general rule of thumb for airport-retail pricing is to add $10 to the average per-square-foot asking rent of ground-floor retail in a particular city.
High-end airport retailers bring in big bucks for owners [therealdeal.com]
Price controls.
There are a few exceptions, but the majority of airports across the country have instituted pricing regulations. Operators are required to adhere to a fair-pricing policy to ensure that the traveling public, airport and airline employees, as well as visitors to the airport will not encounter prices that are higher than those for similar products and services outside the airport.
Background checks, employee compensation, and related issues.
Hiring employees for an airport RMU or kiosk will take longer than it would for a mall location.
Considerations include: Security badging and TSA background checks. Processing times vary by airport, but it typically takes about two weeks for each employee to be processed.
Compensation rates for airport retail employees are traditionally higher than those of mall employees.
Retailers' operating hours are based on flight activity to best service the traveling public (may be open longer than traditional malls; scheduling flexibility is key for employers and employees)
Airport retailers operate 365 days a year.
Many airports have limited on-site parking facilities for employees, so additional commuting time may be required by employees.
Demographics.
Shopping is at best a secondary consideration for airport visitors.
Airport shoppers may have higher stress levels due to travel anxieties and an unfamiliarity with the airport.
The customer demographic in the airport is more affluent than at malls due to the influx of business and international travelers.
Due to the fast-paced environment of the airport, many shoppers are not in the proper mindset to browse
Product sizes and quantities are major concerns for airport shoppers
Airport shoppers frequently buy gifts for those at home, so the gift market is the primary product category they seek.
Airport Retail 101: Your Top 15 FAQs Answered [specialtyretail.com]
I could go on and on like this, but you get the general idea.
my experience: (Score:2)
How about networking in the plane? (Score:2)
Wifi and ethernet between the passengers and maybe a quake server would be an excellent thing on a plane.
External comms is nice, but a LAN party on a plane is awesome.
GoGo needs their money! (Score:2)
Of course this is getting more expensive... GoGo needs to make money and the flying public is willing to pay for network access.
Truth be told, the actual *cost* of what GoGo provides is going up too as they expand into higher bandwidth and international coverage. That kind of system development is *expensive* and as long as GoGo can keep upping the price and turning a profit, you can bet they will.
Who cares (Score:2)
Honestly, that's the last place I care about internet service.
But then I sleep through all my flights. I'm really really good at it.
I get on the plane... sit with a crying baby on one side, a smelly fat guy on the other... and I flip the switch in my head that keeps me awake... and I'm out. I wake up when the landing gear touches down and groggly get off the plane.
This is literally how I fly. How do I pull off this witchcraft? I don't go to sleep the night before a flight. so when I get to the plane... I'm
Spying aint cheap (Score:2)
70 mbit is barely enough to support background traffic of everyone's devices calling home to rat out their "owners". Going to need at least 700mbit per plane to support Windows 10.
Turkish Air free wifi worked better than airport (Score:2)
A couple of years ago I flew transatlantic on a very nice Turkish Air flight with free wifi. They turned it on just about as soon as we were boarded and at the time it was completely free. Not sure how many access points they have, but it worked great on this flight. Maybe few people were using it, or maybe it was offered to business class only. Had it not been free I'd have not bothered with it at all. But it was convenient for downloading some maps I had forgotten for OSMAND+, and I sent a few voice m
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So data is cheaper on an Air Emirates jet than it is on the cheapest cell plan w/data I could find in the US.
How do people not see that as a racket?