On top of announcing Virgin announcing Economy X seating, Virgin Australia has also unveiled details about their upcoming in-flight wifi program.
Virgin have partnered with Optus and Gogo to provide the airline with in-flight wifi.
The airline will have one of it’s 737-800 aircraft fitted with the wifi equipment and will start public trials in April. Optus has said that they will be using their D2 satellite, Qantas on the other hand, use the NBN Sky muster satellite. Qantas have had problems with their wifi and postponed their test flight.
Optus D2 Satellite (Image – Optus)
The airline has said that the testing will be available for 3 months and will be available on the single 737 which is said to travel both domestically and on short-haul international services to New Zealand. Virgin has said that the wifi will be free for passengers during the trial.
Virgin has said that they will use Gogo’s 2Ku technology with two flat-dish antennas. One will be for uploads and one will be for downloads. It’s expected that 2ku will be able to provide speeds of up to 70mb per aircraft which is very impressive!
When I fly in the U.S I always use the Wifi and find Gogo fantastic. They offer great plans and the speeds are always consistent. Virgin haven’t yet announced how much wifi will or won’t cost so we’ll have to wait and see.
Gogo Inflight Internet
With both airlines now going to have Wifi, this is fantastic news, especially for business people. From what I’ve seen I do think Virgin’s 2Ku wifi will be faster than what Qantas will offer but I’ll have to wait and compare the two and see how they perform.
2 comments
One difference, Qantas wifi will be free to everyone (business and economy.) unlike Virgin, they will charge passengers.
Another difference – Virgin may charge passengers, but Qantas is stealing bandwidth from some rural Australians only Internet option: the NBN Sky Muster satellite network.
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