Inflight Wi-Fi – Still Grounded or About to Take Off?

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

It was a long time coming, hotly anticipated and may not have quite lived up to expectations. I’m not talking about England’s World Cup campaign, but about inflight Wi-Fi. According to recently released statistics, less than 10% of people are using inflight Wi-Fi services; a figure which appears quite low, when you consider how indispensable the internet has become.

So has demand for inflight Wi-Fi been overestimated or are there barriers beyond awareness that need to be overcome? For leisure travellers, it may well be that offline entertainment, in the form of games and DVD’s, may be a perfectly good substitute for the online experience. However, for business travellers, an internet connection would appear to be more important for access to online information and email etc. – particularly on a long-haul flight.

Not surprisingly, cost is cited as being the biggest barrier to adoption. Prices have come down since the first services were launched but there is still a cost involved. Consumers will vote with their feet (or mice) and once the price reaches a certain point, expect to see uptake soar. For businesses, the cost barrier would also appear to be important but for different reasons. Inflight connectivity is yet another mobility expense for enterprises to cover, and it is unclear whether organisations have already considered this within their strategies. Consequently, there may be end-users out there unable to connect inflight or unsure whether charges can be expensed back.

We announced our partnership with GoGo a few months ago, aware that inflight connectivity is just another part of the enterprise mobility puzzle that organisations will be looking to manage. In the same way that internet subscriptions in hotels and airports have often been swallowed up by the mobility ‘black-budget’ when not properly managed, inflight Wi-Fi has the potential to exacerbate this issue. Of course, properly managed and provisioned, inflight Wi-Fi has significant potential for enterprises in terms of productivity gains and all-round responsiveness of employees.

There is the other school of thought that says mobile employees actually enjoy a few hours of escape from work when they fly! While this may well be the case, there are times when inflight Wi-Fi borders on a necessity, so it is reassuring to know it is an option, even if this doesn’t mean you are anywhere near as productive at 30,000 feet as you are on terra firma. And to counter that argument further, I’ve been on many flights trapped next to people from whom a spreadsheet or webmail would have actually been a welcome distraction!

Tags: Europe, inflight internet, wi-fi access