Real talk: Flying is dead time. It’s a few useless hours spent trapped in a jet powered sardine tin of farts, strapped into a seat that’s too small, too upright, and has not even close to enough leg room for anyone to consider it remotely comfortable. The food is pumped full of salt, turbulence is terrifying, and the recycled air feels like you’re being intubated by a blower vac. It is an affront to nature and it is generally not a real great time.
Fortunately for all you, you’ll soon be able to make at least some use of your time in transit when pinging between ports domestically. Virgin Australia and Qantas will soon have the ability to deliver you WiFi access in-flight courtesy of the NBN.
NBNCo, the parent company responsible for the rollout of the (now truncated) national high-speed internet network, has put a fleet of brand spanking new satellites on order, whose primary purpose is to account for the 3 percent of the nation that isn’t covered by fibre and urban wireless networks. But owing to the fact that putting a $620million fleet of satellites into orbit to cover a relatively small amount of people on the ground seems entirely inefficient and a shade wasteful, they’ve been looking at other ways to utilise the orbiting birds.
The solution? Offer the nation’s major domestic air carriers access to the satellite network to provide passengers with in-flight internet access.
Though this news should come with the caveat that pricing models have not been discussed, and existing in-flight WiFi services on foreign carriers do already exist and are notoriously expensive.
Still, the comparatively short travel times on offer via flight paths in Australia could make forking out $5 for 30 minutes entirely worth it, if only to send a poke or two to that good looking special someone waiting for you in your destination city. Hell, you could feasibly even join the Mile High Club without ever leaving your seat.
Y’know, if that kind of thing gets your seat back upright.
The satellites are due in orbit next year. There’s no official timeline for in-flight WiFi to be rolled out locally as of yet.
Photo: Graham Denholm via Getty Images.
via SMH ITPro.
