Gogo in flight wi-fi not too bad
I recently had to do a little traveling out of town for a family wedding. I decided to hop on the trusty Delta airways and head up north for the trip. One of the many options they were trying to make sure we noticed was the in flight wi-fo service they offered from Gogo. Currently in flight twittering is free through April 14th, so enjoy that you Spring Breakers! Beyond Twittering, how good is their internet access above the clouds?
I was only on a short flight from Tampa to Kentucky, but managed to have some moderate use throughout the flight. Gogo distributes their wi-fi through a high speed cellphone data signal pointed at their partnered airplanes. I was a little skeptical giving the initial reactions I’ve heard from in flight wi-fi, but that was when it was free to get the idea rolling. Everybody and their Grandma was Facebooking and Tweeting and updating their own family blog. I could imagine how that must have been unleashing a full flight of people onto one internet connection in the air. That’s a bottleneck if I’ve heard of one. My experience was a little different though.
When you log in to Gogo’s in flight service, you have several payment options. You have the option of getting a $5 plan for a 1.5 hour flight, or if you’re that corporate jet runner, throw the $35 unlimited monthly plan onto your corporate card and soak in the web. There are many more pricing options, and should suit anyone’s needs. The prices are all pretty competitive for what you get, so that’s always nice to know you aren’t getting scammed to bad up in the sky’s.
The performance was pretty quick too. Websites loaded pretty quickly, but not nearly as fast as my Verizon Fios at home. Apps loaded and worked smoothly without any hiccups from a poor internet connection. Netflix couldn’t manage a decent enough speed to keep running smoothly though. I didn’t test it at the time (stupid me), but I would say the speeds are equivalent to a good 3G phone connection. Overall, the experience was a pretty painless one. If you intend on doing some light web surfing and don’t need the Hulu and Netflix services, than the Gogo in flight wi-fi is a pretty good choice if you need to be connected.
for more information: Gogo
