In-flight VoIP on Virgin America
Let’s start with a little history lesson here: Boeing’s first in-flight online connectivity service ‘Connexion by Boeing’ was first launched on 17 May 2004. It was the first commercially available in-flight internet service and was offered by a dozen of carriers doing transatlantic flights. I personally used it on a Singapore Airlines flight and found it a welcome change over the in-flight entertainment system on a 12 hour flight. Unfortunately Boeing axed the service little over a year ago, dooming transatlantic travelers back to the stone-age entertainment system.
Luckily, that’s about to change, as Sir Richard Branson told Engadget during an interview on the inaugural flight of Virgin America. Branson confirmed that in-flight internet is scheduled for 2008 and doesn’t rule out the possibility of allowing VoIP on the service. Although he believes people won’t be needing voice, citing the underused in-flight phones available on Virgin Atlantic, Branson says:
“If somebody really wants to talk to somebody, we might well have a couple of rows at the back where people can go and make a call there. We wouldn’t really want to have people talking next to each other, but a place on the plane where people can make a call if they really wanted to, if we had VoIP, then that might be possible.”
You will most certainly not find me on the few rows where people can go and make a call. If Virgin provides non-voice enabled internet on the other rows, I will be quite happy chatting away on IM if I need to contact anybody. It remains to be seen how Virgin will be able to implement this and it looks doubtful they’ll be implementing firewalls to separate the voice-internet from the non-voice-internet seats. It might just be you’re doomed to the voice-enabled seats if you want internet access.
