This holiday season, Google has teamed up with AirTran Airways, Delta, and Virgin America to offer free Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi on every domestic flight from November 20, 2010 through January 2, 2011.
According to a Chrome press release, the promotion will service over 700 planes and roughly 15 million passengers flying this holiday season.
The Aircell-based Gogo inflight Wi-Fi service usually costs $4.95-12.95 per flight, depending on the length of time. The participating airlines have outfitted their entire domestic fleet with Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi.
It’s a promotion for Google Chrome , Google’s Web browser, which is competing in a market dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox.
Airplane WiFi has been slow to take off. While Wi-Fi airplane deployments have skyrocketed from a couple dozen in 2008 to an expected 2,000 planes by end of year 2010, paid usage generated from in-flight broadband service has been extremely low, says consulting firm In-Stat.
HasWifi will let you know whether your flight has Wi-Fi. HasWifi lets you search by flight number, letting you know which flights provide WiFi service.
Last year Ebay partnered with Delta to give away GoGo in-flight wireless while Skype recently teamed with Boingo to give away airport WiFiPortland International Airport (PDX) has had free WiFi for over 5 years.
Free Wi-Fi is now the norm.
- Starbucks now offers free and unrestricted Internet access over Wi-Fi in its stores. Starbucks also plans to give Internet users in its stores free access to paid sites, including the Wall Street Journal. All U.S. company-operated Starbucks hot spots previously supported AT&T Wi-Fi service. A $5 or more Starbucks Card, would get you two consecutive hours of complimentary AT&T Wi-Fi daily. Now it’s all free.
- Barnes & Noble, the largest book chain in the United States, provides free WiFi for patrons, in a deal with AT&T. Barnes & Noble’s agreement with AT&T provides free Wi-Fi to all its customers because the company hopes to bring more customers into the store, and expand its current e-book catalog of 700,000 titles.
- Borders, the second-largest bookstore chain in the United States (after Barnes & Noble), provides free wireless Internet access in about 500 of its U.S. stores.
- McDonalds now offers free wireless Internet access at its U.S. restaurants, lifting a $2.95 fee that it had charged customers for two hours of wireless Internet access. It’s available at about 11,000 of its 14,000 domestic locations.
- Verizon is partnering with Boingo to deliver free WiFi access. Free Verizon Wi-Fi hot spot locations include hotels, airports, restaurants, coffee shops, retailers, convention centers and public locations across the U.S. Boingo’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots – which includes more than 100,000 locations around the world – IF you’re a Verizon FiOS or DSL broadband subscriber.
- Google provided free Wi-Fi at airports, through January 15, 2010. It was working with airports across the country as well as Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others to provide the service. Currently the free deal includes 47 airports. Google is also providing free WiFi on every Virgin America flight during the holiday season.
- Satellite broadband provider Row 44 and mobile media company JiWire teamed up to deliver free in-flight Wi-Fi supported by advertising.
Related Dailywireless articles include; Airplane WiFi: Slow to Take Off, Alaska Airlines Goes with Aircell WiFi, AirCell Powers American & Virgin Airlines, Free Plane-Fi, American Airlines & Southwest: Inflight Wi-Fi Fleetwide, Shipboard AIS Gets a Satellite Swarm, AT&T CruiseCast Live for Vehicular Television, Virgin America: Wi-Fi for All, PlaneFi Roundup.
Posted by Sam Churchill
on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 10:08 am.
