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The Internet Technology

Starlink is Coming To Hawaiian Airlines (theverge.com) 23

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
SpaceX is starting to make deals with airlines to provide its Starlink satellite internet to sky travelers everywhere. From a report: It announced a deal on Monday with Hawaiian Airlines, and last week made a similar deal with charter carrier JSX. None of the involved parties shared the financial details of their deals, but both airlines did say they're planning to offer the in-flight Wi-Fi for free, which is both a semi-miraculous fact and a sign of hope that free Wi-Fi is becoming the industry standard. Delta meanwhile, confirmed last week that it's running "exploratory" Starlink tests. In-flight Wi-Fi has been on the minds of Team Starlink for a while. Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX's VP of Starlink and commercial sales, said last year that the company was building an aviation product, and was "in talks with several of the airlines."
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Starlink is Coming To Hawaiian Airlines More

Starlink is Coming To Hawaiian Airlines

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  • Seems like a good use case for it - a single access point that can be distributed to many users in a small area. From what I've heard, they can't really have a lot of customers densely packed like in a city with their own dishes.

    I guess they'll have enough satellites with the sat-to-sat communication working to cover the Pacific for this to work

    • planes move also wifi AP overload is an issue

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        Wifi AP overload is more of an in-plane networking challenge. Sounds like they'll be able to handle the plane moving with the phrased-array antenna

        • Might finally be affordable internet blue water. But I think that is still a way off. Starlink is always satelite to ground, not satelite to satelite, so does not cover the far ocean. I wander where Hawaii airlines is flying too?

          • Starlink is always satelite to ground

            You need to brush up on the Starlink network. It's both send and receive, otherwise it wouldn't be of any use in remote areas like Moosejaw, Montana or most places in Ukraine.

            Most of this was covered in the article 5 days ago when Delta announced the same deal. https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

            • Sure, it is bidirectional. But the data goes up to the satellite, and then down to a ground station within about 500 miles. Not hopping from one satellite to the next.

              I think they want to change that, but it is difficult. So out in the pacific no coverage, yet.

              Another issue for yachts is that they wobble about.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Ksevio ( 865461 )

                Not hopping from one satellite to the next.

                That's only true for the version 1.0 of the satellites. The more recent versions have laser links to hop between satellites.

  • Awesome (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday April 25, 2022 @01:48PM (#62477556)

    Broadband on flights would be next-level. I would be happy with just being able to VPN properly even if there wasn't enough bandwidth for high-quality video streaming. If they could even do 1 or 2 Mbps per passenger that would be good enough to make a huge difference.

    • If they can have four Starlink Premium links (at 250 Mbps, 1 Gbps total ) .. that would be enough to provide each passenger in a 737 with over 5 Mbps. Actually much more, given that most people won't even be streaming video.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Broadband on flights would be next-level.

      What do you think WiFi is?

  • Block VoIP/Zoom/Jabber/etc? (Score:3)

    by SummitCO ( 1043824 ) on Monday April 25, 2022 @02:01PM (#62477618)

    Lest air travel become even more insufferable with people yelling into their bluetooth headsets...

    • Thankfully much like smoking I think society has come to to regard the "no phone calls on an airplane" a sacrosanct rule. Even if the airline didn't have a rule for it it has become the expectation.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mmell ( 832646 )
        Uh, two things. First, they used to have a handset and RWI in place for the rich and ignorant. It wasn't hidden next to the lavatory. They even used to make jokes about it on sitcoms - "Guess where I'm calling from? An airplane! Is that crazy, or what" (at $5.99/minute, IIRC). I don't recall it ever coming up in real life; I guess nobody I flew with was dumb enough to use the thing.

        Also, I don't recall cell phones working at 30,000 feet. For those of us not intent on wasting money, "no phone calls o

        • I wish it were feasible to block the VOIP stuff. The idiots with satellite phones (and I have experienced sitting next to that guy) are bad enough. Problem is, there are too many network-based ways around that. Google Duo, FB Messenger, Skype, Zoom . . . trust me, social pressures won't keep people from being asses.

      • Society used to regard "no phone calls while you're in the bathroom" a sacrosanct rule, but that concept went down the crapper pretty quickly.

        Although when I walk into the mens room and hear someone conversing from a stall, I do take a perverse pleasure in flushing as many toilets as I can.

    • Have you ever been to DMV where people yell at their phones in a facetime conversation and we all have to hear it ? They fly occasionally.
  • All the in-flight Wifi is moving to Starlink now?

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