safigan

9.8Mbps??? In order to simulate this on my home system, I'd have to degrade my internet throughput by 50% and then add a planeload of passengers onto my router. It's no wonder things grind to a halt.

rucksack

Bingo - we have a winner.

There are no cell towers in the middle of the ocean for obvious reasons. Furthermore, GoGo only has agreements with cell networks in certain countries, namely the U.S. (now also parts of Canada). Therefore, international flights must use Satellite-based communications, which is fortunately much faster than ATG-based communications.

In the not-too-distant future, even domestic flights will have Satellite-based Internet. This is United's approach to implementing GoGo. You could argue United's late in implementing in-flight WiFi because they're almost always late to the party. Or maybe they had the foresight to realize that the original ATG in-flight wifi would just be a headache for customers.

azeckel

I've noticed that plane type has a lot to do with it. The A320s are particularly bad. This is probably a function of the age of the equipment installed. Unfortunately my weekly cross-country flight is always on an A320. Got pretty decent service on the redeye last week, but I would have much rather been sleeping.

CMK10

Seems to depend on the flight. My last trip involved four flights, the first one it didn't work on at all but the next three it worked okay. I've found if you use it on early morning or late flights where no one else is using it, it seems to work okay. Still frustrating with how expensive it is now though.

3Cforme

When your home + cable service is capable of 0.80 mach flight at 37,000 feet, let us know.

FlyAO2

Getting greedy -- I have DSL at home...would kill for 9.8

Father-of-3

I think Gogo should be considered a tool for keeping up with e-mail and texting and really nothing more. I use it for that and am happy with the service. Streaming or anything real-timeish is probably a few years away.

javabytes

I don't have any expectations of being able to stream, but when it takes 60-120 seconds or more to load a plain old web page, that's absurd.

Boltman519

How about 60-120 seconds just to load THIER webpage to login! It's insane sometimes (most times).

CMK10

Thankfully, Flyertalk usually loads pretty quickly on it as long as you avoid threads with lots of pictures.

dtabbs

Several years ago, I used to be able to remote in to a site and RDP to servers and work on work while in the air. I could use e-mail and chat to text with people having issues and work with them on the ground while I am in the air.

Something happened, because that can't happen anymore with service the way it has been the last couple of years.

mnredfox

And remember the pricing goes up soon again.

SuperG1955

The free T-Mobile texting gives me the ability to have customer's make me aware that they need me to call when the flight lands. I can handle question just fine with texting.

I happily dropped gogo.

HDQDD

I attempted to use gogo yesterday to book a flight on DL for next week. It was so slow loading each of the pages (about 30sec-1min each) that it would timeout before I got to confirm my payment. I tried it twice (30 minutes apart) on an ATL-MKE flight. Same behavior both times. If it can't even load the DL page, why tf would I pay for it...

If gogo cares at all about having any customers they better start addressing these failures immediately. Perhaps they need to limit the amount of passes they allow simultaneously per flight.

comptr

So it seems to its a waste of money to get GoGo ? As I was going to buy it for my next flight which is next week but if it is that slow what's the point I would rather just be disconnected and take a nap on the plane.