back to article Airline passengers get (VoIP-free) broadband

American Airlines have launched their in-flight broadband service, with nary a satellite dish in sight - they're connecting direct to the ground using spectrum owned and operated by Aircell. The service flew for the first time yesterday, and all 15 of American's Boeing 767-200 planes should support in-flight Wi-Fi within a few …

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  1. gautam
    Paris Hilton

    Sadists all!

    So Voip is still data streams! Why block it? Internet not being used to its full potential.

    Sadism at work? You bet.

    Paris, 'cos she would also love to have a voip chat with soemone instead of putting up with lack of inflite service.

  2. soaklord
    Coat

    @gautam

    Seriously... Methinks you must be a masochist... You really want this?:

    Hello? HELLO? Can you hear me now?!? How about now?!? Yeah, I'm flying dude! Seriously, I'm like over the Grand Canyon or something... Yeah. No dude, these stewardesses are fugly dude! I thought they had to be hot to be stewardesses. Nah dude, totally psyched!!! Yeah, Vegas is going to be off the hook!!! YUP YUP!!! What? Nah dude, we gotta get wasted when I get there dude!

    Or better yet!

    "Say hi to Gramma! Say hi to Gramma! Hi Gramma! Say hi to Gramma! Tell her we're on a plane!! That's right, we're on a plane!! Tell Gramma we're on a plane to come see her! Tell Gramma! Say hi to Gramma! Say I love you Gramma! No don't touch that! Wait, don't touch the laptop honey! Say hi to Gramma!"

    Mine's the one with the earplugs in the pocket.

  3. Tom

    Have they never heard of tunneling..

    "The lack of latency, and decent speed, would lend themselves to a decent VoIP connection, but American won't be allowing that. Not only will the popular VoIP services be blocked,"

    Its out of the bag, give up, you cant make money out of peoples stupidity anymore!

    Oh, sorry, this is the land of the free...

  4. Chris

    Voip can kiss my ass

    No damn VOIP on the plane! As Soaklord so eloquently put it above.

    However, if they had this for an over sea flight.. I'd be happy to pay $20 for the 9 hours I will be over the pacific flying to Hawaii this christmas. Even if it means I'd have to lug my laptop.

  5. Darryl

    Gee... I wonder

    Wonder if they're blocking VOIP so that it doesn't make the overpriced in-flight telephone system obsolete.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Get Smart Style

    Next time I fly domestic, I'll take off one of my wingtips, stick one of the laces in the earphone jack, and bend over, talking earnestly into the heel.

    Do you think they'll say anything?

  7. Mike Flugennock
    Thumb Down

    In-flight BROADBAND?!

    Fuck that; how about a goddamn' in-flight MEAL? How about six more inches of legroom? How about not being treated like friggin' CATTLE?

    In-flight broadband? P'whah, fuckit.

  8. Charles Smith
    Paris Hilton

    What about the CAT6?

    Won't all those CAT6 Cables trailing along the floor of the aisles back to the switch in the galley area make an awful untidy mess in the plane? It would probably make moving the Drinks trolleys difficult too.

  9. Mike Flugennock
    Coat

    @Tom, re: tunneling

    Tunneling? Yeah, I've heard of it. The goddamn' airlines have been doing that to us for _years_.

  10. CTG
    Happy

    That's nothing...

    on Ryan Air you get a free blowjob in business class.

    Or so I heard...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Hey dumb@sses

    The reason they don't want people doing VoIP is because, due to its real-time nature, the packets can't be buffered like web browsing, email, FTP, video, etc packets are routinely. (That's also why VoIP is UDP not TCP.) Thus it is an incredible bandwidth hog - worse than anything given the paltry amount of data that is actually being exchanged.

    Paris - because all of the previous posters are as stupid as she is.

  12. J
    Black Helicopters

    Re: Have they never heard of tunneling..

    But it seems you haven't read the article to the end... The flight crew will be on the lookout for people talking to their laptops, or themselves, or whatever. Can you tunnel that too?

    And do they offer broadband on black helicopters too?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Aircell rule.........

    Now there is no excuse for people to be away from Facebook, they can update their status to "mid-flight turbulance".

    Well done Aircell, this is the greatest thing since the internet was invented (bar The Register of course!)

    I heard Ryan Air sucks as well.

  14. Bill Andrus

    B-but I'm Texting, Honest!!!

    My IM (Lotus SameTime Connection) has both Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Speech-to-Text (STT) so I can don headset and IM hands-free, which is great 'cuz it also works on my Tilt (!). Advantage over voice is that the history is kept in text form, naturally. Amazingly accurate software, actually. So here comes the VOIP Fuzz down the aisle -- "Sir, are you talking to someone over your WiFi device? Nope, texting with them." Right....

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