Posted by Seth on February 22, 2010 under News | 
Starwood has announced this morning that they are making a significant improvement in the benefits for their top-tier elites: free in-room internet access worldwide at Starwood hotels. Complimentary internet will be given only in the room that the Platinum elite guest is in should they have multiple rooms on one reservation and any charges incurred will be removed on check-out making it a quick and easy way to implement such a scheme. This is a quite nice benefit for those who stay enough to make that elite level, though still not enough to sway me in my theory that hotel elite status is not particularly valuable. After all, I generally stay at properties that already have free internet for everyone anyways or just tether to my BlackBerry and get the connections with no real additional costs.
More details on the promo can be found here and discussion of the promo on FlyerTalk here.
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Posted by Seth on February 10, 2010 under News |
Although jetBlue was very early in getting in-flight internet connectivity off the ground with their Kiteline product, they have fallen well behind competitors Aircell and Row44 in the deployment race. Kiteline came into the market with quite a splash back in 2007. Unfortunately the progress since then has not lived up to the hype. Indeed, while Aircell has deployed its gogo service in hundreds of aircraft and Row44 has secured a deal with Southwest to have the service deployed in all 500+ of their planes in the coming years, the Kiteline product still exists on only one aircraft: jetBlue’s BetaBlue.
And it doesn’t look like that is going to change anytime soon.
Continental Airlines announced plans to deploy the Kiteline product in conjunction with their deployment of the LiveTV television service. The initial announcement was quite some time ago, with the expectation that the Kiteline system would be installed around the same time as the television service. Around January ‘09 the schedule was revised with the Kiteline service expected to see deployment towards October or November of that year. By June the Kiteline deployment was pushed to Q1 2010 and only on about 30 planes as a trial. Then, in December, Continental announced that the deployments of the Kiteline product on the 737-900ERs would not take place until Q2 2010, at the same time that the gogo product would be trialed on the 757-300s. While the delays have been unfortunate, at least that last delay set up a first for the industry: a true side-by-side comparison of two different products on a significant number of planes from the same company. Alas, even that seems not meant to be.
A number of unofficial sources reported over the past few weeks that the deployment of the Kiteline product will not occur by Q2 2010 as was most recently scheduled. There appear to be issues with the hardware that are preventing the system from performing as expected. This is pushing the initial install date to May 2010 at the very earliest and that date is highly unlikely to stick either, according to the reports. And now Continental is confirming the delay with the following statement from a company official:
We continue to follow the progress of LiveTV’s development of Kiteline. We don’t expect that it will be available on our flights in the second quarter of 2010.
What does this mean in the long term? Hard to say for certain. But Continental was the only major carrier committed to the new Kiteline product and they are going to be going ahead with the gogo trial in Q2. If that is the only functional option available to them for a wide-scale deployment it is hard to imagine that they will choose to continue waiting for the Kiteline product, especially with the number of delays it has seen thus far.
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Posted by Seth on January 29, 2010 under Internet, News |
It is really, really, really official now. Southwest is going to have in-flight internet service from Row44. Yes, this would seem to be old news. It was 5 months ago that the carrier announced their intentions to go down this path with provider Row44. But both parties have been rather quiet for the past few months and there was no real progress in the contracts for actually making it happen.
That changed today when Runway Girl noted that the two had reached an agreement. The carrier confirmed the details shortly thereafter on their own blog. The contracts are signed and the hardware install is beginning. The existing four installed aircraft are no longer considered to be in “testing;” the system is officially live. They have still not announced full details on the pricing – that is still in testing apparently – but the product is definitely coming, and at a pretty quick pace. They expect to outfit 15 airplanes per month initially and ramp that up to 25 per month in the near future. That puts the at early 2012 for a full fleet-wide deployment completion date.
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Posted by Seth on January 13, 2010 under News |
Amtrak has announced that they are joining the ranks of the various other commercial transit means – namely planes and buses – and adding wifi connectivity to the Acela Express line plying routes between Washington, DC and Boston. The service is being rolled out as part of the 2010 cabin upgrades on the Acela Express fleet and is expected to be complete in March. The service will be “initially free” though there is no indication what the duration of that free service will be or what the pricing will be when that expires.
Nice to see that Amtrak is signing on for such an endeavor, though the lack of details makes the value of this offering a bit uncertain right now. Then again, paying for a day’s worth of access for the trip on Acela almost certainly means getting more time online for your money than a similar charge on a flight or in an airport. It will be interesting to see if Acela can team with the providers in the major stations along the route which also offer internet service to put together a package deal for customers or if it will still be a la carte throughout the journey.
Posted by Seth on December 16, 2009 under Internet |
Continental Airlines intends to trial both the Kiteline service provided by jetBlue’s LiveTV subsidiary and also the gogo service provided by AirCell according to recent reports. This move marks the first time that a carrier has actually set up a competitive trial of multiple vendors in an effort to best serve their customers. Previous trials have been single vendor affairs, essentially determining if the system actually worked rather than figuring out if it was the correct product.
Continental has had the Kiteline product on their announced roadmap for several months now so that service isn’t much of a surprise. The decision to try out the gogo services is a new one, though one that incoming CEO Jeff Smisek intimated was possible several months ago. Smisek has stated that the carrier wanted to see if the gogo service had demonstrable financial upside before committing to a deployment. By putting both services in play at the same time it will be possible to reasonably evaluate just how much passengers like each product and the relative value of installing them fleet-wide.
As previously planned, the Kiteline service will be installed on approximately 30 of the 737-900ER (73E) aircraft. The gogo service will be installed on Continental’s 757-300 fleet which numbers approximately the same. Both systems are expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2010.
Having already used gogo a few times I’m still much more excited about the Kiteline service but having a true face-off between the two might just be the most exciting of all.
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Posted by Seth on December 15, 2009 under Internet |
More in-flight internet connectivity is always a fun topic to discuss. And there are some rumors floating around now that Aircell may have another customer lined up for their gogo service. In the United States there are only a couple carriers still out there without any announced plans for in-flight internet and this will take another one off that list. Any guesses as to which one it will be?
The current expectation is about 30 planes outfitted by next summer in a trial period before determining what to do with the rest of the fleet. I’m hoping to get confirmation early tomorrow on this one but it is looking quite nice.
Posted by Seth on November 24, 2009 under Internet |
Yeah, it seems that beating up on Aircell and the adoption of their gogo in-flight internet service seems to be a recurring theme in the industry. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possibly deserved. There are a ton of questions out there about just how bad their cash flow situation is. And the answers and information coming out of Aircell doesn’t seem to be helping their cause.
Runway Girl, as always, has some great information on this issue in a recent post: Does Aircell get an average six users per flight? – Runway Girl. Here’s the gist of it. Aircell is claiming 100,000 users per month, which sounds like a big number. But when you divide that out by the over 600 planes in the air with Aircell service and an average of 4 flights per plane per day the numbers are much more worrisome. The math works out to six users per flight. Just six. Considering that they are likely eating the whole cost of the installs and potentially also sharing revenue with the airlines that number just isn’t sufficient to sustain the service.
Sure, things are looking up right now with the expectation of much higher adoption this holiday season. That is due, in large part to the fact that it is free on many carriers. American Airlines, Delta and Virgin America have all struck deals of various sorts for free access (the Virgin America one is, by far, the most broad). And users definitely seem to be enjoying the service. On my recent Virgin America flight there were definitely more than 6 users online but the overall user experience suffered for it.
If the company cannot get sufficient demand at the appropriate price point such that they are going to be profitable then they are in big trouble. If they get that demand but the performance stinks they’re in an even worse position. It is hard enough to attract customers to such a service. Keeping them after a bad experience or three where the costs are not trivial is going to be pretty difficult. I fully admit that one experience does not make a trend, but I’m still worried for them.
No matter which way you look at it the future of in-flight internet is, at best, a hazy proposition. And Aircell is the fuzziest of them all since they’ve got the most exposure right now.
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Posted by Seth on November 11, 2009 under Internet |
For a while now I’ve been a rather strong proponent of the theory that paid in-flight internet isn’t going to attract enough business to survive, at least not with the current pricing scheme. I just don’t think that there are enough people out there willing to pay $8 or more per flight for the access that is available. Of course, the good news for those few deep-pocketed (or reimbursed) folks out there is that not many others are using the service so they get pretty good performance from the system.
But what happens when the cost barrier disappears? This.
Yeah…that pretty much sucks. Maybe it was the fault of the schmuck across the aisle who thought it was a good idea to have a video chat with folks on the ground. Or maybe there are several dozen folks on the plane using the service rather than the average 10-20% that normally do. And maybe it is just that the intertubez are slower over Iowa than elsewhere in the country.
Regardless of the reason, it seems that when stressed the in-flight systems start to bend under the load. They haven’t failed outright (at least not yet) and having any free coverage is better than having none. But I also wonder what the chances are that customers paying $13 for a transcon flight will put up with the lower performance metrics that come with a system that several customers actually use. I know that I wouldn’t. Then again, I probably wouldn’t pay for it anyways.
I don’t know if the speed issues I’m seeing are really typical of a heavily loaded system but if they are then Aircell has a lot of work ahead of them to get the gogo system scaled up to deal with the utilization that they need to realize for profitability.
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Posted by Seth on October 21, 2009 under Internet |
In a move that hasn’t garnered nearly the same publicity as Virgin America’s announcement that they’re teaming up with Google, American Airlines has announced that they are teaming up with Lexus to provide free wifi to users of the gogo system on their flights. The AA promo is much more limited – only 7 days – and requires one to know a special promo code – 2010LexusLS – so it isn’t nearly as good as the Virgin America deal. But something is better than nothing.
Full details on the promo are here.
Posted by Seth on October 19, 2009 under Internet |
Two big stories out today about in-flight connectivity, both of which have me very excited.
The first is an announcement from Virgin America and Google that the latter is going to be sponsoring the gogo service for a two month period – November 10 – January 15. No credit card, no restrictions. Just an email address and accept the Terms of Service and you’re online. Considering that I have a flight booked my first on Virgin America) for November 11 from Los Angeles to JFK I’m pretty happy about that for very selfish reasons.
The second story comes from The Runway Girl, one of my favorite reads for in-flight entertainment news. She’s at the NBAA conference this week and has been reporting all sorts of cool stuff. The coolest, however, is an announcement from LiveTV, the jetBlue subsidiary that operates the in-flight TV systems for that carrier and Continental, among other things. LiveTV has been suggesting that there is a good chance additional in-flight internet connectivity will be coming online in 2010 and the latest news is that they’ve got an antenna ready to go for providing the service. Even better, the cost of operating the service is so low that they expect airlines to be able to offer it on a complimentary basis to passengers. Oh, and did I mention that the service would be available absolutely anywhere on the globe – including the polar regions – thanks to the fact that it uses the Iridium satellite network? This is nothing short of huge in terms of in-flight connectivity.
Now we just need LiveTV to finish up the R&D part of the project and get to the implementation phase so that I can have my emails for free in flight.
It is pretty clear that there is a demand for internet connectivity in-flight. And the fact that companies are continuing to find ways to reduce the costs to the end-user – something that will be critical to actually seeing high adoption rates – is a wonderful thing. Free is always better, right?
Posted by Seth on October 13, 2009 under Internet |
After a lot of speculation over the past couple weeks, Lufthansa has made it official: they’re bringing in-flight internet connectivity back to their long-haul fleet. And this isn’t just the old Connexion service pressed back into service. It is going to be bigger and better than that.
The new service will offer a 1 megabit internet connection to be shared by the passengers (slower than that provided by Aircell’s gogo service). It will also provide access to GSM/GRPS data streams, facilitating SMS and MMS messaging as well as internet browsing on mobile phones. From the announcement:
FlyNet is impressively user-friendly. Passengers with a WLAN or GSM/GPRS-compatible device can log on from any point in the aircraft cabin, just like at any public hotspot. Depending on the device they are using (i.e. a laptop, mobile phone or a smart phone), passengers can choose to be billed via a mobile service provider or pay by credit card. Various different price models are planned – ranging from a rate by the hour to a monthly flat rate. Passengers should also be able to redeem Miles & More award miles for the use of WLAN Internet connections. The exact price for specific products will be announced at a later date. The service will gradually become available on all Lufthansa’s long-haul flights worldwide.
So it’ll be the middle of next year before it is readily available, but the service is definitely coming. Now it just remains to be seen if they can offer it at a price point that allows it to survive. The terrestrial services seem to be suffering there and it isn’t clear that the satellite services are going to fare any better. But we can hope.
