In-Flight VOIP Coming Soon

hdtv writes "U.S. airline customers are likely to be thrilled with an opportunity to sit next to someone constantly chatting on the phone. Information Week magazine is reporting that government auction is opening a way for telecoms to introduce voice-over-IP links on in-flight communication systems." From the article: "Airfone already offers phone service on many flights, but its high cost has limited its use. JetBlue has declined to say what its LiveTV LCC unit would do with a winning frequency. Although many frequent flyers and airline attendants favor a ban on the phone chatter, Connexion by Boeing, whose Internet service is already offered on nearly 200 international flights a day, notes that there have been no complaints of in-cabin incidents about the technology. The Connexion service is regularly used by passengers to make VoIP calls. "

danger?

whenever I fly I always get told that I can't have wifi on on my laptop, nor can I use a mobile phone, and I think they even frown upon using gameboys on take-off. Isn't is danerous to have an internet connection on a plane? can it not interfere with the machinary? They don't let you use mobile phones in hospital because of the danger to heart machines; surely this is just as important; or is this just because I'm not american and you don't have the same concerns as us

Re:danger?

They don't let you use mobile phones in hospital because of the danger to heart machines

While this may have been an issue with older medical equipment and first- and second-generation mobile phones, it's certainly not the reasoning nowadays. People are just more likely to pay attention to "may interfere with equipment" than "show some damn courtesy to the people who are around you". Go to the hospital cafeteria, or the lounge in the ward - no-one will complain about your phone usage there.

Re:danger?

I have been personally involved in wifi certifications in aircraft. I have never seen any interference with navigation systems. I attribute this to the low rf levels of wifi. Not so with cell phones, their much higher transmit levels can cause all kinds of havoc with communication/navigation. I have seen cell phone use in the cockpit (of corporate jets) cause the cockpit audio to go nuts. The upcoming certification of cell phones in the air all center around "picocells", which force the cell phones to transmit at lower power by associating with the on-board picocell and not with on-the-ground cell towers. I am doubtful that picocells will actually get certified, as it all hinges around sucessfully keeping the cell phone's power at a minimum, which may be very difficult in practice.

Really??

Connexion by Boeing, whose Internet service is already offered on nearly 200 international flights a day, notes that there have been no complaints of in-cabin incidents about the technology. The Connexion service is regularly used by passengers to make VoIP calls.

Really??
I tried the wireless Boeing Connexion service on a flight from Singapore to Australia late last year. Ping times at best were around 2000ms and often I lost connection completely - needless to say - no way would VoIP work with those conditions.

Has anyone had any luck with this service and if so, where abouts or is this just marketing hype?

Link spam!

Nice link spam, user "hdtv" pointing to a commercial website, wahoo!

There had better be

a special legal dispensation for beating motormouths into unconsciousness with phones as retribution for the irritation factor on a long haul.

Yet Another Reason to Not Fly

Doubtless these VoIP conversations will appear on the Letterman show in a "Top Ten" list of the most annoying aspects of airplane travel, along with crying babies and seats designed for underage midgets.

Cost??

Airfone already offers phone service on many flights, but its high cost has limited its use

You know what else is limited on airlines by cost?

Everything.

You know what would limit the cost of such services on airlines?

Somehow being able to take away the monopoly of an airline catering to its customers aboard its own jet.

AirFone is expensive because it's the only game in town. Making phone calls on airplanes will remain expensive until there are multiple carriers on the same flight. Good luck with that one.

Old news - has been possible for a while

I work for Telio, which is an european VOIP operator. I may be biased. Caveat emptor.

Our customers have been able to do voip calls using our softphone on intercontinental flights for a year or so, given a decent IP service on the plane. I have even been in a teleconference with one of our employees who was somewhere above the atlantic ocean.

Downside: Latency. These calls have to go via satellites, which means a typical delay of several hundred milliseconds.

Seriously Now

The problem with these potential yak-fests by seatmates and by nearby or loud passengers is being unable to escape from them. That will be quite stressful for some folks. It's not possible mid-flight to walk out of a plane in disgust. It's easy to foresee a spike in "air rage" incidents. The airlines may be forced to limit talk hours on longer flights (say two hours and up), or to provide "sound hoods" (although it's difficult to see how these could be designed to work well in such cramped quarters).

These first efforts at mass access to in-air telephony will be mildly interesting social experiments.

Re:Seriously Now

It's not possible mid-flight to walk out of a plane in disgust.

That's not true at all. The difficulty arises upon trying to return to the plane.

Pfff, it is very simple

Just put up a sign. "Please make your phone calls outside."

Same place to deal with crying babies and anyone who snores.

Or maybe airlines should just offer special areas in the plane for people that do not want to be disturbed. Would you pay 3times the ticket price for a private area free from the rest of humanity? It works on boats and trains. Cheap tickets you sit with everyone else, expensive tickets you got your own space.

But yeah it is an intresting social experiment, how much are people willing to annoy a group for their own needs and how willing is the group to put up with the needs of an individual.

It is nothing specific to cellphones. If you honk your car in the middle of the night to say goodbye you are just as much being an asshole.

What I think is new is that it is more anonymous. A family that constantly has guests departing in the night and making noise will have to deal with the neighbours during the day. You are going to have to live in that neighbourhood for years to come so you better behave.

This is far less the case with a cellphone. You will never see those people in the airplane again so who gives a fuck if they hate your guts.

It is a reason some companies have put up a sticker on their vehicles to provide a phone number to call if the driver behaves badly. Without it the driver couldn't give a damn since he will never face the person he cut off in traffic. With the sticker he stand a real chance of being told of by his cheff. I seen several co-workers being reprimanded for people complaining about their driving in company vehicles.

It would perhaps be intresting to see if the people that make annoying calls are themselves annoyed by other people.

Airplane 2006.9999: The Bandwidth Sucks

Is VOIP is on a separate network? Or is it sharing the same network as the digital fly-by-wire system [wikipedia.org]? Since Hollywood is remaking everything from the 1980's, I can see a whole new generation of Airplane [wikipedia.org] movies where a terrorist attack is averted because everyone uses the VOIP to call relatives and the plane crashes due to a lack of bandwidth while the pilots making out with the flight attendants in the cockpit.

why do it over voip?

Some carriers have been offering phone and fax services onboard for quite a few years, with reasonable pricing (~$1/min, IIRC). You'd just take the handset in front of your seat, switch it on, swipe a credit card and dial. While every passenger can afford a quick phone call, it is too expensive to talk for more than a few minutes, which I think is a good thing.

Heres an idea

Instead of offering VoIP, instead offer content-neutral Internet access, and let customers use their own choice of VoIP providers.

"I'm on the plane! Yes, on the plane!"

As with any other use of mobile phones or VOIP via laptops, the real need is for education about AGC!

Once people finally get the idea that talking at a normal level works just as well as shouting into the phone, the annoyance factor becomes no worse than any other quiet conversation around you.

With cellphones, part of the problem is that there's no foldback to the earpiece, so there's no feedback assuring you that your voice is being heard. Do VOIP clients do this better? I know the one I use via an ATA and a standard DECT phone does, but I don't often use the PC for VOIP calls.

I also don't frequent wi-fi hotspots much (other than mine!); do VOIP users speak too loudly the way most cellphone users do?

VOIP instead of cellphones might prove to be the lesser of two evils for airline communications!

Call me whatever

For most passengers I'd rather them chatting on the phone than trying to chat with me.

privacy

this is definitly one context where you can really assume there is zero privacy considerations.

because remember, virtues like respect for privacy are only for when they're convenient.

Oh well, at least...

at least JetBlue has the free directv, etc.... so you can put on some headphones and drown out the phone chatter.

I wouldn't mind...

..having to listen to someone blather on loudly in the neighboring seat on a flight. At least not if they lift the ban on compressed air horns.

Get ready for air-rage-arama!

Arrrrgh!

sidetone allows whispering on airplanes

I have a sure fire way to make VoIP non-annoying! Its called "sidetone" and its missing from all cellphones! Regular phones use them!!!! Sidetone sends some of your voice to your ear. This keeps you from screaming into the cellphone, and if its nice and loud, you can (and will want to) whisper. The only reason sidetone isnt in cellphones is the battery drain. BUT on an airplane, there could be powered VoIP phones which could strong sidetone.

Call Me A Pessimist

Yeah, call me a pessimist, but whenever I see the words "Coming Soon" and "Government" close together, something makes me want to laugh.

*DING* You are now free to drop calls

Most carriers (if not all) still can't get the quality issues completely sorted with ground-based VoIP solutions, and they want to run it to an airplane now?

Obviously a big issue is that packetized information follows a different set of rules than the traditional TDM voice communication non-VoIP uses - so the "Internet" is really a bad place to have time-sensitive information travel without a healthy bandwidth margin and robust network design. However even on some carrier networks doing VoIP that involve internal gateway-to-switch paths (no Internet, though it may traverse the same IP backbone) timing and latency issues still come up.

I fail to see how VoIP will make it to an airplane successfully, given that packet loss and delay are likely to play havoc with most of the known solutions to call quality issues.

Re:Skype calls from Lufthansa wireless

That is very true. I have had voip calls with my friend when he was in-flight on Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Chennai. The call quality was great.

Re:Skype calls from Lufthansa wireless

I would say, offhand, that that assumption was rather rash... there are many reasons to talk to your computer. She could have well been writing her sales report using a voice recognition system or composing her on-line journal (newspeak = BLOG---barf) or doing a myriad other things... spreadsheets, databases, medical transcription... Maybe she was just used to talking to walls, and gee, here's this microphone... heh. Anonymity is made for people who care... just not enough to get involved.