Originally Posted by
3Cforme
I'd love to see a hundred random speed tests from GoGo ground tower flights and 100 WN Row44 flights. Looking at the WN forum one rarely(!) sees compliments about how fast and seamless is the service from Row 44.
And the same applies to US, although there's enough complaints about slow speeds with the WiFi. No airbourne system is going to deliver the speeds most consumers have at home or work, at least not anytime soon.
As for bandwidth for airline streaming video, is any of that live, anyway? IIRC the GoGo service was delivering video via wifi on the on-board server.
I think that no matter what system a carrier uses, IFE will be streamed from servers on board. Satellite bandwidth is too expensive to have enough bandwidth for IFE to be streamed from the ground. The big difference the consumer will see is probably going to be pricing. GoGo invested in all the ground station infrastructure that the companies that started with satellite coverage didn't have, so GoGo controlled the pricing more. Either the carriers, or 3rd parties they recruit, will have to subsidize the WiFi portion if GoGo is used while the carrier has much more control of pricing with companies like Row 44, whose model was the carrier paying for aircraft installation of the satellite technology as opposed to GoGo paying the smaller cost of installation on planes for the lower cost ground station on-board systems.
Jim