Virgin America to offer in-flight WiFi, Google Talk

by Ted Wallingford Sep 17th 2007

In previous experiments, in-flight WiFi Internet access failed to capture much attention, either because consumers thought it was to expensive or because it wasn't ubiquitous. Ie. if it's not on every aircraft, it's hard to plan your travel time around being productive, sleeping, or watching a movie on your iPod. For those of us who typically only travel on business, in-flight WiFi is a huge productivity enhancer, if only because it saves us from suffering through the naked feeling of offline e-mail.

Virgin says they'll have the service deployed by mid-'08, and while they haven't talked much about pricing, we're guessing this will be a premium service, since the airline has invested a new in-flight portal called "Red" that will allow passengers to surf and chat even if they don't have their own laptops on board. Red will offer access to Skype and Google Talk, too. Very handy indeed.

But this stuff needs to become ubiquitous. Show us a major domestic airline that offers always-on, zero-premium WiFi access and we'll show you an airline that takes a bite out of business traveler market share.

Tags: airplane, travel, virgin, wifi, wireless

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

d2 said 1:34PM on 9-17-2007

"For those of us who typically only travel on business"

what is the world coming to? it is utter crap that people have to ever live that way. i travel more for fun than on business, be it on a bicycle or a plane, and i always consistently ensure that i spend more time per week doing personal interests than business work, because i strongly feel that it is important to maintain culture and friendships -- not to mention that i am *more* productive in my own time at my own things than at work.

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