11 October, 2012

Why Wi-Fi In The Sky Just Got Ridiculously Expensive

Why Wi-Fi In The Sky Just Got Ridiculously Expensive: In other words, people are actually using in-flight Wi-Fi now — and there's enough demand, on certain flights, that Gogo can charge more. Low supply high demand = higher prices. Gogo has seen a 25 percent increase in inflight usage this year, up from 4.3 percent of flyers in the first six months of 2011 to 5.4 percent in the first six months of 2012. Five percent of all flyers doesn't really make it seem like inflight Wi-Fi is in high demand, but this number is for every flight with Gogo. Shorter flights might have usage rates of 1 percent, but the Virgin flights from SF to NY are up to 26 percent of passengers. A lot of people chomping on tiny bit of bandwidth is the reason Gogo either has to hike its rate or change its system altogether.