Air China inflight broadband

Thanks to the asiapundit blog for pointing us to this interesting piece announcing that Air China is about to install Boeing's Connexion inflight broadband on some of it's international flights.

This raises the interesting dilemma for them about whether Connexion can be routed through the "Great Firewall".

It also reminds me of my first experience of Skype at 35,000 feet last year somewhere over Russia on a flight from Frankfurt to Hong Kong with Lufthansa (which has the wireless Connexion system on most of its long haul flights). I woke to hear a telephone conversation being carried out in hushed tones and there, a few seats away was an enthusiastic businessman wearing a headset and merrily chatting away, presumably on Skype or something similar. At $9 an hour, this is a whole lot cheaper than the $8 a minute which the inflight phones have typically charged on international flights. A very mixed blessing if you ask me....but there we go. I'm told it's only a matter of time before we suffer mobiles inflight as well. A whole new cause for air rage?