Originally Posted by
Lost
Doesn't WN also throttle their bandwidth to favor the TV/music/movies at the expense of internet? I watched a baseball game on their TV service the other day with perfect picture and sound without a hiccup the entire flight. A full -700 too.
No. The live TV is picked up directly from the satellite broadcast feeds that they are already transmitting for feeding TV stations/Cable systems. The music and movies are streamed from a local server on the aircraft. The issue with the internet service is that it is two way and your packets must first go through a transponder on the airplane up to the satellite and then back from the satellite down to the ground (and vice versa). The Wifi system on the aircraft itself has plenty of capacity, it's the up/down transponder capacity from the aircraft to the satellite and the satellite to the earth that is the choke point. The tv, movies, and music are not contending for this limited capacity, it is only the internet access that is in contention.