AIRTRANTRYGOGO
DELTATRYGOGO

@Gary – the downside to the “you can work from everywhere” is that with a job such as mine (I work for a software company), I am expected to work from anywhere.

I’ve spent too many evenings/weekends/holidays in airports/restaurants/coffee shops trying to help my customers.

Yes, I can help you with your unhandled exception error while I am sitting on my butt on the floor at ATL with my cell phone propped on my shoulder, on speaker phone so I have a chance of hearing, remoting into your network on horribly slow WiFi, having the signal drop each time a plane takes off or lands, but is that really customer service?

If I ever use internet access on a plane (and I avoid those Delta etc folks with the free WiFi coupons like they have swine flu), I hope to spend my time looking at LOLcats.

Another fun thing…with the advent of cloud computing (in the true sense – where your applications and data live on a computer on the internet and not on the computer in front of which you are sitting), if you are trying to finish up that “one last thing” – finalizing a report, finishing a sentence in an email, etc – and the plane dips below 10,000 feet (the point at which the airplane’s WiFi is either turned off or programmed to stop working) before you hit “save” – guess what? You just lost everything since your last save. Where did it go? Into the clouds…

My understanding on cell phones on planes is that the plane is moving so quickly (in relation to the ground based towers) that they can’t handle the hand off of the signal…so while one second the best tower for you may be in Atlanta, the next may be in Savannah, then another city…just a technical limitation of the phone itself. I believe you are correct that once the plane is above 10,000 feet whatever instrument it interferes with is turned off, and therefore not a factor for most of the rest of the flight (until descent).

I don’t know if you are a Mythbuster fan or or not. I am not selling the show, but they did a test and showed cell phones do not cause interference with air plane equipment. So why do I mention this one? Sprint and other providers have 3G service. I would think that if airlines can run wireless that does not interfere on the plane, we could use our cell phones for internet on one. Still, 10 dollars isn’t bad on a few hour flight. You risk your battery going dead before anything else, honestly. If you are on a plane 2-3 hours, having the internet @ 10 dollars is worth it. Slow or not! I mean, it gives you something to do for a while. I think I would be willing to pay, even if the service wasn’t rapid. Still, I would prefer to use my cell phone / 3g device to obtain it, but maybe the coverage wouldn’t be reliable at that. Never tried because of current rules.

It didn’t quite happen right away, but we are starting to see the beginning of this becoming a reality. A world where you can live anywhere, travel anywhere, and be able to stay connected and work the entire time.

It is getting interesting….