I'm currently on Lufthansa LH 414 returning from Burton Group's Catalyst Conference in Munich, Germnay. This has been my first chance to try out the new Connexion by Boeing in-flight Internet service and I have to admit I'm pretty pleased. The cost is $9.95 for the first 30 minutes (with an additional 30 minutes free), or $29.95 for the entire flight. Lufthansa handed out $10.00 discounts at the gate for the full-flight service, so I ended up paying $19.95.
A check at http://www.testyourvoip.com/ reports a MOS score of 1 on the 1-5 range, meaning that I'd have more luck shouting than I would making a Skype call.
http://www.dslreports.com reports similar bad news, 111 kbps download speed, 29 kbps up-load speed, not nearly enough to support a voice call.
Even despite these scores, the system appears fairly responsive, it's much better than dial-up over GPRS via my treo, though not quite the WiFi performance I usually get at public access points.
Even if I could make a call I'm not sure I would do so. Given that most of the folks around me are sleeping I don't think they'd take to kindly to me having a voice conversation right now.
Welcome to the Sky High Club ;-). You obviousely had a day with bad connectivity. The QoS of Connexion seems to very different depending on weather, sun flares and whatever. I had three experiences yet, one one there was no connectivity at all, on the second it was excellent and I talked to the whole world via Skype with excellent quality, adn on the third is was very slow at the beginning of the flight, broke after one hour and came back after 3 hours. The good news: I complained and got my money back immediately.
Posted by: Richard | Nov 07, 2005 at 15:01