Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols, mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our toes.
Could? I flew a month ago on a flight with Starlink. I downloaded 10s of gigabytes of data without hiccups. Calling was not an issue. And it was completely free.
Not one time have I had a consistent internet connection whilst flying transatlantic on Delta, KLM or BA airplanes, to the point that I regretted having paid for it every single time.
I haven’t been to India for 7 years but I distinctly remember a very productive flight from Delhi to Heathrow on wifi while I was sshed into a machine and working on something for hours with no issue - far better than the signal I get on the train from London to Manchester.
Qatar/Virgin Australia, Sydney->Doha. I’ve never had really good connection either before this, and I tried many-many times. That was the exception when it worked as intended.
From a technical standpoint, the ability to make VoIP phone calls from planes exists right now, at least on planes with newer and better internet connections. It hasn't been enabled because of ferocious customer opposition every time the idea is proposed. Which, frankly, is just fine with me. People can still send emails and messages from in-flight Wi-Fi, no need to subject everyone else to your phone calls.
Phones in seats have been a thing for decades, WiFi has been a thing for 10-15 years.
hooray for technology!
Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols, mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our toes.
Could? I flew a month ago on a flight with Starlink. I downloaded 10s of gigabytes of data without hiccups. Calling was not an issue. And it was completely free.
Quite curious, which route was this on?
Not one time have I had a consistent internet connection whilst flying transatlantic on Delta, KLM or BA airplanes, to the point that I regretted having paid for it every single time.
I haven’t been to India for 7 years but I distinctly remember a very productive flight from Delhi to Heathrow on wifi while I was sshed into a machine and working on something for hours with no issue - far better than the signal I get on the train from London to Manchester.
Qatar/Virgin Australia, Sydney->Doha. I’ve never had really good connection either before this, and I tried many-many times. That was the exception when it worked as intended.
From a technical standpoint, the ability to make VoIP phone calls from planes exists right now, at least on planes with newer and better internet connections. It hasn't been enabled because of ferocious customer opposition every time the idea is proposed. Which, frankly, is just fine with me. People can still send emails and messages from in-flight Wi-Fi, no need to subject everyone else to your phone calls.