The Blog

“Fahrenheit”.

I think this is how in-flight ISPs Aircell, Row 44 or OnAir should have called their piece of hardware they supplied airlines with. But I doubt that their engineers were whistling Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” while working on their solution… or is it because it’s still light-years away from being something decently called “broadband Internet”? who knows…

Anyway…

Most of us know that airlines have been touting the possibility of in-flight Internet access for, oh, seemingly forever now.

But chances are that even the most well-traveled fliers haven’t had the opportunity to update their Facebook pages or surf YouTube at 30,000 feet, at least on a U.S. carrier. Despite industry promises over the years, Wi-Fi broadband service is available on relatively few flights. Blame technological hurdles, financial turmoil and a general reluctance by airlines to invest in upgrading fleets.

The U.S. airline industry, though, now appears serious about moving forward with Wi-Fi in the sky.

A half-dozen carriers – including airline heavyweights American, United and Southwest – are testing or implementing Internet service on select flights. Other airlines hope to roll out the technology on a broader basis later this year.

Ars Technica posted yesterday a very detailed article on the current state of in-flight Internet. If you’re interested in knowing more about « Internet access at 35,000 feet », I strongly recommend you to read this interesting review which explains how the technology works, which airlines offer Internet service, and what’s coming up.

I’ve so far not have had a chance to fly on any of those airlines which have in-flight Internet service, to try myself how good the access is. But I’ve experienced earlier today on my Paris-Brussels train trip, an other meaning of « high speed Internet » which does not amount here in Kbit/s but in Km/h (or mph)…

From theory…

Three years ago, Thalys, made the news when the company announced that it was launching an innovative service for its customers traveling between Paris and Brussels: on-board true broadband access . The idea behind it was to provide passengers traveling across national borders at 300 km/h with a continuous Internet connection on board trains.

…to reality…

Today the service is fully operational between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne and allows travelers to stay connected during their journey, which is sometimes critical when you still need to access your office’s server to rework the presentation you’ll give your clients in a couple of hours (yeah, to some extends we’ve all done that at least once).

Thalys’ wifi service allows VPN access to professional applications, sending and receiving emails from your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird), web browsing, VoIP as well as free information services (news, Thalys timetable, online ticket reservation, etc.).

Free information? Indeed, as the email and web access services will cost you a small fee (€6,5 for a 60 minutes access or €13 for an unlimited access for the whole journey – note that if you’re traveling between Paris and Brussels, a 60 minutes access is well enough) if you’re not traveling in 1^st class. In Comfort 1, travelers enjoy from a free access to all ThalysNet services.

…there is still a gap to fill

In terms of quality of service, some users and others agree to say that the service is “painfully slow”, hardly delivering more than 33k output (which is bad dial-up speed)…

So what is my feeling about this? Well, reading the news and checking Thalys’ time table on their onboard server (http://portal.thalysnet.com/) was really fast and smooth on my netbook, but for the email and web access I chose to rely on my FonJoiku Spot’s application for Symbian devices which gives me fast access to the web. And I confirm that 3G works really well at 200km/h!

So, I think that we still have some work ahead of us to set what we’ll proudly call on day “on-board/in-flight broadband Internet”

I just can’t wait to be the next Chuck Yeager who twitters at (almost) the speed of sound!