Wi-Fi Over Water: Internet-Augmented International Travel

Air travel with Internet included is nothing new to inner-continental travelers, especially in the United States. The process involved in installing the hardware necessary for airplanes to receive Internet signals from the ground is a simple one; the company GoGo claims they can make an airplane web-ready literally overnight. Through their system and similar setups, IP geolocation and other basic tenets of Internet connection are easy if not downright interesting. But head out over the ocean and suddenly this sort of thing just doesn’t work anymore. Therefore, Internet access during overseas flights has remained elusive.

That is, until now. According to CNN United has announced a plan to install Internet-reception onto its airliners that operates in coordinate with satellites. The satellite strategy is itself nothing new, with Southwest Airlines originally using it for telephones in the mid to late 1990s and most recently on several of its more trafficked routes. But it’s so far a costly way of connecting to the web while miles above ground, and so far not optimized for over-the-ocean travel. United hopes to be the first airlines to provide an economical and effective satellite-based Internet service on board extended international flights.

Problems arise in the fact that unlike the “overnight” process associated with connecting an airplane with Internet signals coming from the ground, the satellite strategy is not so easy of an installation process. Not only that, but the heft added by the satellite dish itself is a problem that airlines are going to have to figure out for themselves. In the end, United might find a way to provide their customers with a cheap way to connect while flying above the open ocean, but competitors might find it a harder task to accomplish.

But if United succeeds, then competitors will have a hard time avoiding the issue. If anything is going to give the advantage to a particular airlines’ international travel sales, it’s most certainly going to be the ability to surf the web during those unforgivably long and bumpy flights.

Jonathan Jaxon is a social media guru writing for websites across the Internet. He also specializes in writing about ip geolocation, Wi-Fi Internet, and other mobile device developments.