All things wireless on planes, the good and the bad...

So this Wednesday the FCC voted to allow airlines to provide wireless internet access on planes, by all accounts it should be widely available by 2006. Lufthansa's FlyNet service is all ready to roll - check out the technical requirements: 802.11a/b/g are all supported. I think the big story about this that no one is talking about is the consequences of in flight use of WiFi.

Sky-hi wi-fi
Yes, surfing the net and doing email and stuff while in the air is cool, and will probably help pass the time on a flight. But when I'm getting charged the $30 or more that they intend to charge for the thin pipe to the ground I may well just forgo that treat unless someone else is paying. However if I can use my WiFi in the plane then what I'll really want to do is fire up Unreal Tournament, Americas Army or any number of other multiplayer games and literally kill a few hours killing my skyborne network neighbours. Someone just starts up a LAN server, puts their WiFi card into ad-hoc mode and bobs yer uncle instant airborne networked gaming - let the chaos ensue! I think there will even be gaming clubs that meet for such sessions in air on their regular weekly east-west commutes.

The question is, will airlines find or seek a way to stop such activities? When WiFi is unleashed for their revenue producing Internet access will they be able to stop it? I think it will be hard - remember that even a bluetooth network could be used to do such things so once they have admitted that turning on your wireless technology of choice isn't going to cause the plan to promptly nosedive into the ground, them it will be hard for them to stop people doing whatever the hell they want up in the sky. Even without wireless you could still get a few people together and hard-wire up their computers with a battery powered network hub and do some gaming without wires today. But WiFi will make this so much easier and on a flight with a few hundred people you're almost bound to find a handful of people ready for some airborne fun and games instead of work, work, work.

Air rage take two
Meanwhile the FCC is still soliciting public comment on cellphone use on planes but clearly its been listening to a whole raft of cellular providers who want a piece of that pie in the sky.

No matter what happens with revenues from cellphones in the air I can assure you that they will shortly cause chaos in the skies. As seat neighbours across the friendly skies will soon discover, sitting next to someone who is content to yell into their mobile for the entire flight. Cell yell is bad enough in public, but when the noise of an aircraft has to be overcome people will literally be yelling. The effect will be like sitting next to a crying baby and as everyone knows crying babies and extended flights in cramped airplanes don't mix.

For some reason when the noise is coming from a kid we usually imagine that the parent is feeling more pain than we are and in sympathy just put up with it. However when the source of the noise is a garrulous adult with nothing better to do than yak on the phone for hours on end I am sure that tempers will quickly fray. Trust me on this: cell phones will be grabbed and thrown as will punches. Seats will be kicked, and flight crew will quickly tire of resolving arguments started by cellular phone use. Pretty soon airlines will contemplate phone free areas in planes, or even small booths reserved for cellular addicts.

Will there be any going back to the innocent carefree days of cellphone free flights? Trust me, once phones are on planes there is no way that cellular phone corporations will let them be removed (well maybe one way - see the next blog entry). They'll cite free speech laws and all kinds of stuff to keep them up there. For me, I think that cellphone companies will make so much from this service (think thousands of dollars per long haul flight) that they should be forced to pay for a soundproof cellphone use booth on planes reserved for phone use. Noisy phone users can then be banished to them - we already have a few on each flight - they are called toilets but I don't want people hogging those for their verbal diarrhea!

Since I'm sure airlines are also going to be creaming off some profits from the cellular companies they should be chipping in for it too, but the last person to pay for it is the flying public at large. Just those people that actually use their cellphone in flight. Make it a $1 per call "air peace tax" and I'm sure between the cellular companies, airlines and chatty customers our air travel can once more be made relatively quite again.