Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches

Re:Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches by rb808 on Thursday June 29, 2017 @10:32AM (#14663581)

Just when you thought flying couldn't get any worse, now you'll have some loudmouth chatterbox facetiming with their friends for hours talking inane b*t.

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Re:Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches by ceejayoz on Thursday June 29, 2017 @11:28AM (#14664049)

They can already do that with their friend in the next seat.

I'd prefer a kid facetiming with Grandma to a kid with nothing to do.

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Re:Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches by tjohns on Thursday June 29, 2017 @12:55PM (#14664790)

Most inflight WiFi services block VoIP and video chat, both to conserve bandwidth and to preserve sanity in the cabin.

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Re:Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches by JumpCrisscross on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:18PM (#14665614)

I VPN and have received (though not answered) FaceTime Audio calls in the air.

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Re:Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches by tjohns on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:27PM (#14665687)

Well, sure, there's workarounds. But most people aren't going to be running a VPN.

And the documentation for in-flight WiFi explicitly instructs you not to take voice calls, out of consideration for other passengers. You wouldn't be out of line politely asking somebody to stop.

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Re:Inmarsat's European short-haul wi-fi spacecraft launches by athenot on Thursday June 29, 2017 @03:32PM (#14666187)

I also have a VPN and have been able to make calls. However, a latency hovering around 1,500ms and very heavy jitter mean that no matter what encoding you try to use, the connection will be crap.

Text chat on the other hand is perfect. Low bandwidth, soft realtime.

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