EWR764

On the sCO side, the answer is because the decision was made to pursue LiveTV in the short term with the illusory promise (hope?) of WiFi service to follow "shortly thereafter." I think it's clear that CO bet wrong on LiveTV vs. WiFi, mostly because it came down to costs, and LiveTV was willing to bear virtually all of the risk in bringing it to CO airplanes. I enjoy the LiveTV and even purchase it in Y from time to time, but it really serves no business purpose and is strictly an entertainment option... although in-seat power is a great perk for offline productivity.

We all know that the LiveTV WiFi implementation has been nothing short of a comedy of errors, from abortive attempts to jury rig a land-based system built on obsolete technology to a spectacular rocket launch failure for a satellite-based solution. United will likely be a pioneer (among North American carriers) for international wifi but will sadly be years behind in rolling out a system for the domestic network.

The good news is that the UA system will be faster and more capable than the wifi currently available through other vendors but the question is, how long will we have to wait for it?