It's a small miracle that you can open up your laptop and
surf the web while soaring through the air in a metal tube some seven
miles above the ground, but the experience is inconsistent, and when it
works, the connection is often frustratingly sluggish. That's about to
change.
Once focused on undercutting the competition, JetBlue is
now best known for its in-flight product: complimentary snacks, 36
channels of free DirecTV and friendly flight attendants (excluding that
one who jumped out of a plane
in 2010). This year, the airline is undergoing a service alteration of
sorts. The traditionally all-coach carrier will soon cater to business
travelers with a bed-equipped premium cabin, and by the end of next
year, all customers will be able to surf the web from 36,000 feet with
speeds that rival (or often exceed) what we're used to on the ground.
That new service, powered by ViaSat, is called Fly-Fi, and it's hitting the skies this November.
We spent a day with JetBlue's subsidiary, LiveTV, the
company responsible for providing in-flight entertainment (IFE) on more
than 600 aircraft, including 188 JetBlue planes and some 200 United 737s.
If you've watched DirecTV while flying either of those airlines, it's
LiveTV that put it there, and soon, the Florida-based firm will be
responsible for getting you online, too. Fly-Fi, and its to-be-named United equivalent,
will deliver up to 12 Mbps of data -- not to the aircraft, but to each
and every passenger on board. Join us aboard JetBlue's first
Fly-Fi-equipped Airbus A320 after the break.
Source : engadget
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