[For my updated review of the Gogo service, click here.]
Last week, I took a cross-country Delta flight on a Boeing 757 that was equipped with Gogo In-flight Wi-Fi Internet. Gogo and Delta are running a promotion through December 31, 2009 whereby first-time users can try the service for free. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to test the service on my iPhone 3GS, so I followed the simple instructions on the card in my seatback pocket, entered “deltatrygogo” in the promo code blank when I got to the payment page, and within a minute I was on the Internet, which I used throughout my four hour flight. The service worked great and I strongly recommend using Gogo if you want to have Internet access on your iPhone while you are flying.
The Gogo service is currently available on select domestic flights on Delta, United and American Airlines. AirTran and Virgin America offer the service on all of their flights. US Airways announced that it will add the service in 2010.
Access is easy. Once your plane reaches 10,000 feet and you are told that you can use electronic devices, go to Settings and keep your iPhone in Airplane Mode but turn on Wi-Fi. You will see gogoinflight as an available network. Select it, and in just a few moments a screen will pop up for you to log on. (If it doesn’t, just go to Safari and try to access any website.) Follow the prompts to sign up, choose a plan (or use the promotional code noted above), and then you will see this screen telling you that you are connected:
At that point, you can use your iPhone to access the Internet to do just about anything you want. Of course, you will want to read and send e-mails, and that works great. Using Safari to access websites was also very fast. Twitter and Facebook worked great, as did my RSS reader app, NetNewsWire.
The terms of service prohibit you from using VOIP to make phone calls using the Gogo service. I briefly contemplated launching the Skype app just to see if it worked notwithstanding the terms of service, but then quickly decided against it. The last thing I want is to be surrounded by people yakking on the phone on an airplane, so I certainly didn’t want to start any trends. But you can easily interact with people on the ground by sending e-mail back and forth or by using instant messaging. If your company supports VPN for extra security, VPN does work fine with Gogo.
One concern that I had was speed. After all, we are talking about using the Internet at 30,000 feet. But to my surprise, the speed was quite reasonable. Gogo says that the speed varies depending on the number of people on the flight using the service. I ran two speed test apps, at different points on the flight, and both of them consistently showed the speed as around 800 to 900 Kbps for download and almost 200 Kbps upload. For example, here is the results screen from one of those apps:
That is not even close to the Wi-Fi speeds that I normally get on my iPhone (I get around 7000 Kbps down and about 800 Kpbs up on my home Wi-Fi), but it is very similar to what I typically see on AT&T’s 3G network. Indeed, my subjective opinion of the Gogo service was that it felt as fast as a good 3G connection, which is plenty fast for most of what you want to do with an iPhone on a plane.
For example, I was able to download an app from the App Store quickly and easily. I could download music and podcasts from iTunes, but it took a while to do so, depending upon the length (for example, around 10 minutes for one podcast). YouTube worked fine.
Both as a test, and as a source of entertainment, I decided to access the NBC mobile website and watch some sitcoms I had missed last Thursday night (30 Rock, The Office and Parks and Recreation). To do this, you go to m.nbc.com on your iPhone. Click on the “video” tab and choose “full episodes.” There are plenty of choices, around 17 shows that are currently on the air, and 11 classic shows (currently: The A-Team, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Battlestar Galactica (the original series), Buck Rogers, Charles in Charge, Emergency, Knight Rider (the original series), Magnum P.I., Miami Vice, Quantum Leap and Simon & Simon). Each show is broken into a few segments of up to around ten minutes. When one segment ends the next segment starts to load.
By default, the iPhone waits until it has loaded enough of the segment so that it can play the video through to the end without pausing before it starts to play. Sometimes I found that the segment would start in just a few seconds. Other times, it would take a few minutes to buffer enough video, so I used that time to browse a magazine. Either way, before long, I was watching the episode and the quality was excellent. I had loaded my iPhone with video content before my flight, but it was so nice to watch something new that had aired so recently that I didn’t even bother with most of what I had loaded on my iPhone. And as an added bonus, no commercials—although I’m sure NBC will include them at some point.
I have seen reports that Gogo uses traffic shaping to share the bandwidth on the plane, so if you are trying to do something that doesn’t use a lot of bandwidth, like check e-mail or even load web pages, your service will be given priority. For high bandwidth uses like streaming video, you will be given a lower priority so that you don’t hog all of the bandwidth that your neighbors are trying to use. This seems fair to me and probably explains some of the reasons that I had some delays when I was streaming television episodes.
So how much does Wi-Fi on your plane cost? If you haven’t tried Gogo before and you fly Delta, you can use it once for free by using the promotional information I noted above. [UPDATE 10/21/09: Google and Virgin America are also offering free Wi-Fi on every Virgin America flight from November 10, 2009 through January 15, 2010.] Otherwise, there are several cost plans. For a short flight of 90 minutes or less, the cost is $5.95. For any flight of more than 90 minutes, it costs $7.95 for a mobile device like an iPhone. The iPhone price is cheaper than what you would pay on a laptop: $9.95 for a flight of 90 minutes to three hours and $12.95 for a flight of more than three hours. You can also pay $12.95 for 24-hour access on multiple flights or $49.99 for a month of access.
Is the service worth it? I think so. On a short flight of 90 minutes or less, I probably won’t have enough need for the Internet to spend $6 for it, but it is nice to know that it is there. For a longer flight, $8 seems reasonable to be able to keep up with your office and be productive, and may also be worthwhile just to entertain yourself on the Internet. Indeed, airports have already conditioned us to paying crazy high prices for food and bottled water, and you’ll probably get more out of the Gogo service than you did from the pre-flight Starbucks coffee that wasn’t much less than $8.
I used it on a recent AMerican Airlines Flight. It wasn’t even a full flight. It’s nearly impossible to successfully stream video. The gogo wifi throughput is so small the video has to pause to buffer every few seconds. I tried both tv.com and YouTube on my iPhone 3g with the same poor results. Kind of a ripoff if you ask me.
I have to agree with the comment above. I tried gogo twice on my Airtran flight out and back from ATL to DIA and have to say, it was almost pointless. The plane right now is about 1/2 full and I can’t stream anything for more than 2 seconds. I tried to do my homework using our online math site and every 10 seconds it would say “disconnected from the server.” Facebook loads partially if I’m lucky. Great concept, but it certainly needs some work. I guess all I can do is check email and post comments to various blogs. LOL
My company bought some of us guys who travel a lot 30-day GoGo accounts. We’ve all had nothing but trouble. I tried using it on at least a dozen flights and was only able to barely check my Yahoo mail twice. The other guys had similar results. Needless to say, we told our IT people not to bother renewing the accounts.
I have tried 3 times and was disappointed with speed each time. I “chatted” while in the air and each time got a canned response about “atmospheric conditions, etc.”. I will certainly not use it in the future.
I agree, GoGo us just not fast enough to be of any real use. You can check email and browse the web but cannot stream video – which is what most people want. I’d recommend not using it.
Totally SUCKS, every 15 mins get disconnected.
It used to be sooo much better, but recently, it’s been VERY poor. I’m usually on packed flights, so it could be a sheer throughput issue, but GoGo should be scaling with their demand. It wouldn’t hurt them to do some caching/optimization…they charge enough to justify the purchase of a customer-experience-enhancing mechanism. Can’t stream for longer than six seconds, email is flakey at best…darn near useless for all but VERY slow web browsing…
I used GoGo on a flight from SFO to DTW yesterday. I paid $12.95 but was not able to do anything except chat with the GoGo support rep who told me that bandwidth is not guaranteed and that I should try again later in the flight.
Nonsense. I couldn’t download 1.8MB of email. Just froze for 30 mins. Couldn’t connect to Live Messenger. Wanted to book a flight for next week. Couldn’t do it.
They won’t get my money again.
Gogo is a scam. Don’t use it. I was on a long three-leg flight last week and two of the three legs were supposed to have wifi available according to the delta flight information. Upon takeoff we were informed that it would not be available but the flight attendant could not explain why. The next flight was from LA to Honolulu and we were informed upon takeoff that wifi could not be used over the ocean. Of course when confronting gogo their only explanation was that the wifi availability information is only based on the type of aircraft and that I should have read the fine print.
Of course it’s non-refundable. So if you are interested in throwing away your money then by all means give it to them.
[Jeff responds: This happened to me on one flight too, and unfortunately when Gogo isn’t working, the flight attendants have no idea what to do to get it working again. But twice this year I have purchased 30 day packages and used the service without any problems on many different flights during those 30 days without any problems. You cannot depend upon Gogo working 100% of the time, so keep that in mind if you pay for the service before your flight and depend on it working during the flight. Consider spending a tiny bit more to pay for it on the flight, where you can confirm that the service is up and running before you pay. But it usually does work, and when it does work, it is great to be able to catch up on your e-mail from the air.]
Folks unless you want to exchange emails with NO attachments and forget about video clips on any web page then you need to run away from GOGO. this is a scam and the fees are outrageous for the phenomenally poor service you receive. Nothing here to see with GOGO, move along. Poorest quality ever. Speediest.net downloads ranged from .16 to .54 mps. Seriously.
I agree with all the latest posts. I had a terrible experience with very slow service and Internet that kept crashing. Eventually, I had to be on chat with the customer rep for 40 minutes before I could send an email for work. Totally not worth the money, and they are not willing to refund you either. All they will do is send you a coupon so you can use their awful service again for free on the next flight.
I wan’t to post about how poor gogo is but I am lagging really bad(gogo currently in use) will never purchase again
Gogo sucks. Using it now, trying to stream the Euro Cup. Can’t even get an audio stream going. Don’t bother wasting your money with gogo.
By far the slowest speeds ever! 3G is 100 times faster than gogo wifi. That’s how slow their “no-fi” is …terrible!! Can’t download app, stream, open attachments. Only thing you can do….email! New slogan should be no-go inflight. What a waste of money.
It is sooo slow that it cant keep up with my typing speed.. its waste
Go Go does not stand behind its product. When I attempted to activate it kept telling me that there was a system failure and to try again (which I did two more times). They ended up triple charging me on a one-time use that was never connected, and then later told me “sorry, we don’t give refunds!” After threatening to report to my CC company as fraudulent, I got a “one time courtesy refund”. So that cinches it — I’ll never risk using Go Go again. A company needs to stand behind its product and not charge if the promised service is not delivered.
All the other quality of service issues aside, they know they can’t stream video, which is addressed in the FAQ and Terms & Conditions (both of which no one reads before purchasing). They need to have a more clear disclaimer on home page, product page, and the sign-up page that it doesn’t allow for video streaming, since this is obviously a significant factor in people’s buying decision (oh, maybe that is why it is hidden?).
Until they do so, they have zero credibility.
GoGo is too slow…you cannot stream anything without it pausing every few seconds..
heh what do you expect with American, they are behind the times with everything. why dont they have tvs in the seats yet like Jet blue???