Blogging from 37,000 feet with Delta Airlines

I’m finally heading home to Oklahoma City from the Mobile Learning 2012 Conference in Phoenix. I missed my connecting flight in Salt Lake last night because of a mechanical delay of an hour and a half departing Arizona. This is the first flight I’ve taken when I’ve successfully used onboard / in-flight wifi, so I thought I’d write a quick post to share how it’s working.

First the pricing. Delta uses GoGo Wireless, and currently the least expensive option is $10 for wifi access during a flight. Since this is almost a two hour flight it seemed like it might be worth it, but I certainly will be more likely to use in-flight wifi services if they are priced more in the $5 range.

I am wondering how many people have sprung for the “all year” option?

In addition to having full access to the paid version of The Wall Street Journal, Delta flights currently offer full access to Amazon.com websites. This adds a new dimension to the “SkyMall” shopping in flight experience, if desired. The AUP also indicates traffic is managed so high bandwidth applications may not work.

I was able to successfully download two apps in flight on my iPad, but it was pretty slow going. One of the apps was “Speed Test,” and my results are below. Reasonable download speed for checking email and reading news, but not enough upstream capacity for anything like Skype or FaceTime.

I was able to check my Skype VoiceMails and use FlipBoard to read news. I’m blogging this with the free WordPress for iOS app, and my screenshot images are uploading reasonably fast as I insert them into the post.

Yet again, “normal” gets redefined. Wifi available in-flight, as it is in our family car on cross-country vacation trips (and even around town) thanks to my cellular mobile hotspot. The ubiquity of Internet access continues to advance, for those on the “connected side” of the digital divide.

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On this day..

• LISTEN Carefully to his Words – 2023
• Transliteracy is the New Language Arts – 2013
• Updates to Blog Advertising Options and Procedures – 2013
• Great Historical, Interpretive Remix Videos – 2011
• New Oklahoma Digital Stories: Integration, Boy Scouting, Italian Food Festivals and Planting Trees – 2010
• Don’t put clickers in the same basket as laptops – 2010
• Episode 1 of the International Cooking Show – 2009
• Key for posting video embeds to WordPress – Disable visual editing – 2009
• A reason to moderate Ning Members – 2008
• links for 2008-04-14 – 2008