Surfing at 30,000 feet – proximity in airplanes might make internet access a more social problem than technical
Accessing the Internet while flying from point A to point B has been a secret desire of many since the dawn of more ubiquitous public access capability. While laptops have been letting busy execs turn flight time into (semi-) productive time for quite a while, the link to the Internet and the head office has been a missing one. Airlines have been working with several companies to fill that gap and some are ready to put it into full production. The problems they’re looking into now are more the social ones than the technical ones:
Seat 17D is yapping endlessly on an Internet phone call. Seat 16F is flaming Seat 16D with expletive-laden chats. Seat 16E is too busy surfing porn sites to care. Seat 17C just wants to sleep.
Welcome to the promise of the Internet at 33,000 feet — and the questions of etiquette, openness and free speech that airlines and service providers will have to grapple with as they bring Internet access to the skies in the coming months.
Considering the level of “etiquette” in use these days by cell phone users who insist on holding personal conversations at medium-high volume not 2 feet from you I’m a more than a little concerned about these social aspects. While it would likely not affect me at all to have the guy in the seat next to me go browsing the latest nudie site or watch the trailer for the latest slasher flick, I’d have a real problem with him doing so with my 6-year-old in the seat between us. Some airlines are talking about filtering content for their internet access as well as blocking some voice services such as Skype. Others are not.
Meanwhile, American, Alaska and Virgin have no plans to filter sites based on their content. At most, an airline may manage traffic and delay large downloads, or in Virgin’s case give passengers the option of enabling controls for their kids.
“We think decency and good sense and normal behavior” will prevail, said Jack Blumenstein, chief executive of Aircell LLC, which is launching service on some American and Virgin flights in 2008.
Uhhh… right. I’m not sure where Mr. Blumenstein is living but I’ve got considerably less faith in that. In the end, the airlines can only do what any business does: put out the product and see if it sells without generating too many complaints. I wish them luck in that.
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Time August 26, 2008 at 07:42
[...] of in-flight wi-fi internet access on US carriers. It appears that introduction has arrived and, as I mentioned when I wrote about it, the airlines are having to deal with social aspects of internet access that are proving far more [...]