VOIP in the air?
 

Forgive me if there's a long thread about this already. With mid-air internet availability growing, I have to wonder whether VOIP is allowed on the plane. I haven't seen any official restrictions or notices. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. I think whether one should be allowed to VOIP on the plane from a social disturbance standpoint is perhaps a matter for a separate thread. I'm just wondering if it's technically permitted. If not, by whom?

I believe that the internet providers can/do block the ports and or sites that allow VOIP to work. It should not be difficult to block at the router or site filter level. Even without the annoyance factor, they probably don't want a few people monopolizing the bandwidth.

No, it is not.
According to Gogo (inflight service provider) using VoIP onboard is prohibited by FCC regulations.

They block VOIP calls.

But, as to be expected, somebody figured an easy way around it

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/08/despite-airline/

That is an older story, so don't know if it's still valid or not

That's incorrect. FCC regulations prohibit, as the link you provided says, cellular calls. It is GoGo who is prohibiting VOIP, not the FCC.

Any passenger certainly can ignore rules (e.g. smoking ban, switching-off cell phones, etc.) but be prepared to face the consequences.

Nerd, yes, I think you are right. The FAQ mentions VoIP is prohibited but doesn't specify whether this is their own or FCC rule.

Even if you can work around the blocks, you’ll still likely have some latency issues.

Actually no - not on a terrestrial service like gogo. A satellite based service would be different.

And yes - it is blocked, and in addition it's normal practice for Aircell (the company that operates the service) to monitor the traffic being sent over the wireless link from each aircraft, and block any "suspicious" traffic in real time. If you were using a VPN then this would probably be very difficult to detect, but it certainly adds a lot of obstacles. In addition you have the human factor of the passengers around you objecting :)

Blocked for me too.

It's not port blocking. Skype, for example, will try lots of ports, including port 80 and 443. Blocking those ports would not be wise.Have you tried it? Although corporate SIP and H.323 setups often use well-known ports, ask the engineers at Sandvine, or Bluecoat about "how simple it is to block VoIP" and you'd hear an earful. It's a battle between those who want VoIP to go through and those who want to block it.

I've used VOIP over both EVDO and HSPA. Sometimes it is good enough, but not always. I haven't hesitated to call Mom from overseas this way, but I wouldn't call a business client. When it works well, you are basically stationary. Walking around a hotel room is fine, riding on a train is usually not.

My understanding is that GoGo basically ties into the ground based cellular network using multi channel EVDO connections so I assume the connection would be similar.