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No matter how you do it, air travel is the worst. Sure, you can liquor yourself up at the airport bar on severely marked up booze, but after baggage check, TSA screening, delays, and layovers, I would never step foot in an airport again if I could get away with it.
While attempting to find a seat anywhere near an outlet is a pain, there is one aspect of air travel that is undoubtedly the worst – the Wi-Fi. If you want to forego using your data plan, you’ll be paying way too much for one-time-use wifi that rivals the speed of your 2002 AOL dialup server. If it’s bad in the airport, it gets infinitely worse on the plane. Even if you do choose to pony up for in-flight wifi, you’ll likely be so frustrated by the service that you’ll wish you’d just unplugged instead.
Thankfully, that’s all about to change with the promise of awesome in-flight wifi by 2018. Airline Wi-Fi company Gogo Inc. has our backs and is promising to make airplane Internet service actually usable in less than two years.
While currently offering speeds that top out at 10 gigabits per second (gbps), Gogo has announced that by 2018, in-flight wifi will have the capacity for speeds up to 100 gbps, which for reference, will be fast enough for you to stream video without delay on your smartphones. That’s right, in less than 2 years, your flights will go by in the blink of an eye with your now unlimited access to stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime right from your seat.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, this doesn’t only apply to domestic travel either. In-flight wifi currently works by connecting to currently existing cell towers, meaning if you’re flying overseas, you’re shit out of luck for the majority of your flight.
However, Gogo’s new system will replace that methodology with wireless LTE, meaning you’ll be able to stream video on your overseas flights as well. To make it even better, this method for delivering in-flight wifi will actually be even cheaper for passengers to use. Not only will your Internet service be ten times faster, but it’ll also be cheaper.
If this sounds too good to be true, well, don’t forget that the rest of the air travel experience is still going to suck. Gogo isn’t going to make sure that your checked bags don’t get lost or that you don’t get frisked by the TSA, but at least for the duration of your flight, you may actually be able to enjoy your travel experience for the first time ever. That is unless you have a middle seat, because no amount of high-speed wifi will ever be able to make up for that..
[via Mashable]
Image via Shutterstock
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Steph W.
Steph W. is a new Master's degree graduate with an intern's salary and six-figure taste. She realizes her expectations far exceed reality, so she spends her days pinning away Loubs she pretends are in her physical closet instead of her virtual one. Her hobbies include attempting to trapping her boyfriend into marriage before he finds out how insane she is and pretending that Black Box wine tastes as good as the kind she could afford when she was gainfully employed. Send her tips for getting out of student debt at recruitchairtsm@gmail.com
@therecruitchair
Ok their is no way in hell that its gbps. I think what you mean to say is megabits per second (mbps).
What is this, an ad for gogo? When I fly airlines with wifi provided by gogo, they are always the worst. Gogo sucks. And it’s also super easy to steal their outrageously priced wifi on American, but I won’t elaborate on that.
This is just GoGo catching up with ViaSat, which provides JetBlue’s and a lot of United’s aircraft with Wi-Fi. It’s been possible to stream video on JetBlue for a while (on their paid plan, not the free plan).
I am aggressively against this. Being on an airplane is the only excuse I have for unplugging and not working/responding to emails.