I would only imagine this will apply to those who fly Emirates on a A380 … just thought I'd share the finding with you guys
Now it’s free to blog, post or tweet from your seat on most of our A380 aircraft. Enjoy 10MB of data for free, or buy 500MB for just USD 1. Three of our A380s don’t have free Wi-Fi yet. But you can buy 500MB for USD 1, and also on select Boeing 777s**.
This is pretty normal with satellite internet. The airspace above certain countries is still controlled and regulated by those countries - and some place regulatory restrictions on them.
The Great Wall of China
Their internet is screened, ours is stored. (plus shipped to america). choose your poison.
Looks like its super slow internet
Select A380s and Boeing 777s also feature GPRS/EDGE services.
But… Free is free! lol
but why would you use your own data?….
this is why i upvoted :)
Just remember you are still paying a premium to fly with emirates compared with other airlines (usually $400+ more)
So basically you get what you pay for
Oh, I thought people flew Emirates because Qantas flight attendant just looks cranky and old.
I fly emirates because the seat distance is bigger, and I can fly both flights to europe with A380. I fly also Singapore, because they don't stress out the engines of the 380's as Qantas did.
Still less chance of an Internet connected plane getting lost
Disagree. Emirates is often as cheap if not cheaper than many airlines depending on routes.
The 500mb is for wifi.
The GPRS/EDGE service is for cellular roaming along with other normal roaming voice services.
They would be using either satellite and/or GPRS/EDGE for internet access through a wifi access point
They use satellite, to provide internet to their internal wifi network.
And they also use satellite to provide the backbone network for GSM base station/s in the plane which are capable of providing voice (GSM) and some older data services (GPRS/EDGE) - use of these services are the same as roaming on international networks.
how do you roam on the sky when the plane is flying around 1000kph?
They have GSM cellular services on board (eg. like a mobile tower - except for the tower part) which effectively create a mini mobile network in the plane (this is fed by their satellite connection). This is seen by normal GSM phones as a normal cellular network and as it isn't your home network (eg. Telstra/Optus/VF), it is roaming.
Note that only certain providers have agreements to roam to these networks. I don't know the specifics for Emirates, but last time I tried a similar service on Qatar, it didn't work with my telstra service, however it did work with my UK ee and o2 services.
Unbuckle your seatbelt, stand up and walk around? :P
Finally - a usable amount of data in the air - although when I tried this a few weeks ago, with the free 10mb, it seemed a fair bit slower than usual, probably due to more people using it - lets hope they increase the network bandwidth capacity now (if they can).
Always wondered if it restricts any particular apps etc? or its just open wifi
For example I use kik to message a lot of overseas friends and always wondered if kik would work on my next flight over to see them.
It won't restrict app usage, the only restriction will be the free 10Mb limit
I'd happily buy the data for the long trips and $1 USD for 500mb is cheaper than my carrier here on the ground lol so its a bargain IMO
didnt you hear the news flash, scotty has decided to charge a premium for access to ozbargain on emirates flights
So much for net neutrality.
The average page size for Ozbargain (without Cache) is around 0.5MB.
With Cache, it's about 0.2MB - So you'll be able to enjoy around 47 pages of Ozbargain for free!
Used the wifi a few weeks back. Was pretty solid. I browsed my email, Facebook and Reddit without any lengthy delays. But honestly, their on-board entertainment is so good, I didn't use the net for long at all.
10mb! Seriously that will be gone in 2seconds as soon as you connect ur smart device. But purchasing the 500mb is cheap as chip!
Not on GPRS, no
I used up the free 10mb very quickly on a trans-tasman flight…it's really not that slow for browsing-only.
You have misunderstood, see drmac's comments
Preferably connect to a VPN when in the sky. There has been a number of reports of fake SSL certs so they may be blatantly snooping on your communications.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/gogo-issues-fake-htt…
You should do this on the ground too!
I'd use 10mb before I got to my seat..
last time i coughed, and 10mb was used up
10MB!! Wow!!
That is nearly 7 x 3.5 inch floppy disks!! cowabunga!
Good for seeding those MSDOS disk images
Was playing hearthstone on my trip back to Dubai last month for a $1 for the trip
Reckon this works on the Qantas A380s that codeshare with emirates?
No, it will only work on Emirates A380's that codeshare with Qantas
Qantas uninstalled all their inflight wifi after their trial ended
I want to say words that I cannot say in a public forum. @#(%&# Qantas.
Qantas uninstalled WiFi because no-one used it and no-one used it because it was too expensive. Well done Qantas pricing department
And in a few years time when every other airline carrier has wifi on their planes, Qantas will spend millions installing it back in to planes and try to offset it with high data costs again.
Get with the times Qantas!
This! I remember the wi-fi trial was something ridiculous like $15 for 5MB or $30 for 15MB. Something ridiculous like that. It's as if they didn't want to install it and made sure there was no demand for it.
I can confirm that the Qantas/Emirates codeshare (Emirates Metal) AKL/MEL QF8761 A380 has Wifi.
Not sure about Qantas metal but I have not seen it for a long while.
Why wouldn't it? It's an Emirates aircraft.
I fly regularly each week from MEL to AUckland and I try to get the Qantas Emirates a380 codeshare flight at least once a week to use the net. It is great for WhatsApp, FaceTime etc. Too slow for WOW though.
During the heavy electrical storms on Friday night I quickly sent lots of WhatsApp messages to my wife and family as a just in case and kept them up to date in that particularly bad flight.
On a recent flight I took on Emirates it was $1 for 500MB and then for additional data it said something like "For every 10MB over the 500MB the cost is $0.00".
Additional data
15Mb = $7.50 and $0.073 per 100Kb thereafter (73cents per 1Mb)
100Mb = $20.00 and $0.073 per 100Kb thereafter (73cents per 1Mb)
http://pointmetotheplane.boardingarea.com/wp-content/uploads…
+1 for $1 for 500MB.
I fly Emirates whenever I go the UK as their service I find is A+. Could never fault them (yet). So this is an added bonus for me.
To the UK is a long flight so even spending $5 for 2.5GB is worth it.
The last time I flew they hadn't introuduced this yet (but still had a wifi service on offer) but it was like $10 for 500mb.
I tried it this time flying between DXB and MEL on a 777. Works decently well
Used this on a flight to Dubai last Decmeber. Was horrendously slow. At least I was kept up to date on the cricket scores.
+1 to their inflight entertainment being the best of the competition.
I used it a few weeks ago on Emirates from SYD to AKL A380. It was fine. I found that you need to turn off background data usage otherwise it runs out fast. I was able to do Google Maps whilst flying.
The plane also had its own mobile tower - so you can reasonably cheaply SMS mid flight.
i wonder if this would be classified as mile high club if you look at norty sites?
Or websex with your missus?
Which reminds me of that joke. "If a woman is uncomfortable with you masturbating in front of her, she can always find another seat on the bus."
Can someone explain how you actually use this? Is it like hotels where you connect to their wifi on the aircraft and it will bring up a page asking for credit card details or something similar?
Stupid question - how do you buy 500MB and when do you pay? On a plane?
Why they even bother with 1 USD?
Yup. You pay on the plane. Connect to the WiFi and it takes you to the page to pay
Training.
Training you to get used to paying for additional services. When most drones are used to it, it will then become mandatory to make purchases in-flight.
I hope Emirates fly direct HK or china route.
They do… not from Aus though.
Currently using it to type this comment up.
Speeds are quite slow, as expected… if you're not on the NBN or live 2 houses down from your local exchange, it's pretty similar with Australian internet @ an average of a staggering 20kbp/s ;)
Payment is processed (only credit card is accepted) via the wifi login.
They use to charge a lot more of 500mb (which I actually preferred because that means there was more bandwidth available.
You can do quite a bit with 10mbs given the slow speeds, like check your twitter feeds and d/l some emails etc.
Your'e a legend!
thats gotta be the best use of the free internet!
20kbps seems tremendously slow. Then again the only reference I have is that i get about 700kbps when downloading content that earns me personal emails from Sony BMG…
It took around 35 seconds (latency issues) for that comment to post and 4 minutes for the photo to upload.
It's more of a gimmick and currently does not show any promise given Sat bandwidth limitations (at least outside continental U.S.), I expect this to change in the near future though.
It's good to see Emirates taking initiative to make in-flight WiFi more accessible for pax.
You have a lot of tabs open for slow internet 😉
pre-loaded in the lounge! :)
Just arrived in Europe a few days ago, was absolutely amazed at free and cheap wifi! Made my 24hr journey so much better!
I was even able to send photos to friends!
Loving Emirates!
We flew Dubai to London on the Emirates A380 (Qantas QF8001) on 29-May-14.
Our flight was delayed twice - we were about to depart and there was debris on the runway and 20-something aircraft ahead of us which delayed us about an hour. Then as we were reversing out, somebody stood up then fainted immediately. The staff were running around and eventually they took him off the plane and had to remove his checked-in bag, so it was another hour before we took off.
We had less than 24 hours in London before our tour started, so I decided to get on the Emirates WiFi to show the others what we could do in London & we could decide where we'd spend the few hours we had once we landed.
Look out for this: There were 2 or 3 price plans, but these were different whether I checked on my mobile or on my laptop.
I paid about $8 for 15MB or so. WORST DECISION EVER! The connection was so slow/glitchy that pages wouldn't load completely and time out, needing me to refresh. I asked a flight attendant and they had no clue about the system, but tried to act like they did (like talking to a computer salesperson at Harvey Norman).
I could barely load any pages and eventually it told me that I'd used up all of my quota!
I think that was the worst $8 I spent on the entire trip.
Hopefully they have improved it since then, otherwise I wouldn't waste your time!
http://www.emirates.com/au/english/offers/2114927/announcing…
A380 coming to Perth 1/05/15!! whoo hooo
Use Onavo Extend app to stretch that 10MB a little further!
You forgot the ** condition
** Wi-Fi in the sky services may not be available over a number of countries including China and India. Our service provider is working with regulatory authorities to extend coverage.