The real (non-MSNBC) url for this story is http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/104318_boeing16.shtml
It's a very cool service, and I hope that they end up finding it cost effective enough to expand across their entire fleet as aircraft get upgraded.

Am I the only one who noticed the $30 price tag and thought that might be a little more than I would be willing to pay?

Interesting quote from the article -

"...The sleek, lightweight Pentium III Lifebook S6010 laptops, from Fujitsu Siemens, are all fitted with a wireless card or they can be connected to any seat with an ethernet cable.

Passengers with their own wireless laptop network cards will have to wait to use them. So far, only the Fujitsu Siemens wireless card has received regulatory approval, though Boeing expects common wireless cards eventually will work with the system..."


Given that elsewhere in the article, it's stated that passengers were allowed to use their own notebooks for the test, what's to stop use of any 802.11 card prior to them being officially approved? Flight attendants generally aren't technically savvy enough to distinguish between particular pieces of laptop hardware, anyway.

Also, I wonder how strongly secured their wireless AP is?
Just WEP and a password on the AP, that you recieve when you pay the fee? The service is only being offered in First and Business classes. This is going to make warflying a popular activity for economy class passengers on these legs!

There are inherent limits to the amount of network security that they can really implement, since the following constraints apply -

• Customer ease of use - Can't ask customer to install custom software on their system (IPSec style encapsulation, obnoxious PPPoE type software)
• Assume users aren't technically savvy / keep aircrew support and workload at a minimum - This probably negates locking access via customer card MAC addresses, and having separate access credentials for each customer. Perhaps they'll use a single AP password for all users, which will change on each flight?
  

Comments welcomed!

Is it just me or is the calculation of 37kps a bit off? a 4.7 meg file that takes 17 minutes to upload would be going at 4.6kps

you're calculating kiloBYTES per second, they're calculating kiloBITS per second. both answers are correct.

Broadband internet on airline flights, the idea is lost on me I'm afraid. I suppose I need a kick into the 21st century

seamie2e, with broadband on a flight, you can stream video and audio from anywhere in the world. A long haul fight (14-18 hours e.g.) is one of the most boring thing you can do. With broadband, I would be very happy to sit there for the whole time and surf, listing to the music from my home server.

I hope they offer some sort of AC power for you. Not much use with only a few hours of battery time!

i'm confused. They're doing _this_, but I still have to turn my walkman off at take off?

Once a few jetliners crash because of wifi I bet they'll rethink this. :)