Still Awaiting In-Flight WiFi

JetBlue launched

a crippled WiFi service yesterday – well ahead of schedule, since it seemed

in July that JetBlue wifi wasn’t going to arrive until 2010. So props to them

for getting this thing off the ground before Row44 and AirCell and Panasonic

are really in business. But really, the idea of limiting WiFi usage to Yahoo

Mail and the Blackberry Curve – that’s just pathetic. I can understand

that JetBlue might have bandwidth issues which means it doesn’t want everybody

surfing the web at the same time. But there should be some way of allowing anybody

to email text-only messages without limiting usage to those passengers with

Yahoo accounts.

Caroline McCarthy describes

the JetBlue offering as "an ultra-low-end mobile browser" –

and it seems to be a pretty

unreliable one at that. I don’t think the Row44 people are going to be at

all worried by this competition, and I’m still looking forward to real

in-flight WiFi early next year.

This entry was posted in technology. Bookmark the permalink.