Bypassing Gogo’s Inflight Internet Authentication

Internet access on board of a flying plane is non trivial and certainly doesn't come free: you need to install and maintain equipment on board, maintain a network of ground stations, write and debug some software, pay money to other internet providers etc.

With relatively small number of paying customers (yet), you have to keep prices high to maintain the profitability of your business.

Think about this: if nobody pays, they will close this service. Just like the bakery will close if nobody pays for the bread.

It's a bunch of little niggling aspects that add up into just feeling the whole thing is yet another gimmicky disposable income scoop for out of touch spendthrifts.

1. Fifteen different prices depending on what alleged type of device you're using, and gasp whether you have more than one.

2. Internet access is only required for most tasks due to people's laziness of using webapps.

3. Alternatively, "yay, I can refresh reddit on a plane"

4. Partial Internet access given before payment, to make it as disruption-free as possible, even though it will necessarily end up admitting things like the original article.

5. These whole "enter your credit card" wifi networks in general. Network access is infrastructure. Yeah, it takes a bit of work to backhaul a plane. But it also took quite a bit of work to build the plane. Just make the infrastructure universal so we can rely on it instead of clouding the thing with massive transaction overhead.

6. Why give the spineless airlines any more money than you have to? This attitude is subject to change when they start sticking up for their customers by giving the TSA the boot.

But honestly I'm doubt I'm going to win any points for these views on HN. I should probably just turn my commenting threshold back down.

>Internet access is only required for most tasks due to people's laziness of using webapps.

Laziness? How is it laziness if the best app for the job happens to be a web app?

Huh? Where do you get this from?

> 1. Fifteen different prices depending on what alleged type of device you're using, and gasp whether you have more than one.

The device type is a good indicator of bandwidth usage. It's sensible to bill using this model for now. They could use metered bandwith, but something tells me you'd complain about that too.

> 2. Internet access is only required for most tasks due to people's laziness of using webapps.

What does this have to do with anything? People use the internet for all sorts of stupid stuff. I happen to use it mainly for vpn and ssh, but why does it matter?

> 3. Alternatively, "yay, I can refresh reddit on a plane"

So? Again, who cares?

> 4. Partial Internet access given before payment, to make it as disruption-free as possible, even though it will necessarily end up admitting things like the original article.

Partial access is given due to exclusivity deals and that sort of thing. Would you prefer the alternative of just not giving you anything? Who the hell complains about free? Seriously.

> 5. These whole "enter your credit card" wifi networks in general. Network access is infrastructure. Yeah, it takes a bit of work to backhaul a plane. But it also took quite a bit of work to build the plane. Just make the infrastructure universal so we can rely on it instead of clouding the thing with massive transaction overhead.

You do realize that Boeing, Detla, and GoGo are different companies right? Also, it takes a lot more than a "little bit of work to backaul." It took GoGo many many years working with the FAA, ISPs, and others to only just recently get this setup and approved. Look at what's happening with the dreamliner if you want an example of what can go wrong if you do this incorrectly. Finally, most of the planes in a typical airline's fleet are decades old. You can't just bake this cost into the price of the plane (as if that makes sense anyways. not all 747s are passenger planes). With your proposal, we'd maybe get wifi in 2030 (assuming this proposal would be possible at all, which I doubt it would).

> 6. Why give the spineless airlines any more money than you have to? This attitude is subject to change when they start sticking up for their customers by giving the TSA the boot.

OK, seriously, W.T.F. are you talking about? The TSA is employed by the airport, not the airline.

On my last flight, the price had been raised to $20 or so. I'm not sure if it was holiday price-gouging or they've simply raised their prices, but in either case I was not pleased - especially as the service quality seems to have gone down recently.