4 ms·

I was just in Qatar Airways flights that had “Super Wi-Fi”. It was barely enough for WhatsApp and Messages. Got 3.0 Kbps using fast.com

• simfree 4y ago
  Airline WiFi providers usually throttle video streaming (which fast.com shows up as) to limit bandwidth usage. Satellite connectivity in general has very restrictive usage policies and throttling. Ground 2 Air services like GoGo can be much better, but not when they have a super narrow chunk of cellular spectrum. Gigabit to the plane is possible cheaply if the ground to air spectrum was available and you can put in a few towers to cover the flight path. GoGo doesn't have more than a few hundred towers for continental US coverage... Much cheaper than a satellite!
  • lxgr 4y ago
    > Satellite connectivity in general has very restrictive usage policies and throttling. That's no longer true, in my experience. Both Viasat and Gogo 2Ku are much faster than ATG in the US, and I've been able to stream VOD quite reliably a couple of times. The latency is an order of magnitude higher, but given that using voice services is not allowed anyway, the only advantage of ATG to me is slightly faster interactivity on SSH sessions. That said, Gogo's ATG seems to be pretty outdated. I've had better experiences with the European EAN, which is a hybrid ATG and satellite network. > GoGo doesn't have more than a few hundred towers for continental US coverage... Much cheaper than a satellite! I don't think a few hundred towers are enough to cover the entire US, at least not with acceptable bandwidth. EAN, for example, has more than 300 base stations and still only covers part of Europe, and Europe is much smaller than the US.