As there is always a lot of hype about free Wifi, I thought I would put the major airline Wifi industry into perspective.
The world is obsessed with Wifi, which makes it logical that major companies will spend billions trying to deliver Wifi to aircraft.
Someone obviously thinks it worth it to tap into 5 billion travellers. Even superstar Elon Musk with his $10 Billion Starlink is jumping in.
The bizjet world has been dominated by GOGO in the domestic USA and internationally, Inmarsat and Viasat are merging to fight the power of Intelsat and Utelsat, the big satellite players in the airline world.
They are all hyping faster, with Elon leading the pack for now, but since when is faster been cheaper.
Yes Elon is faster, but he spent twice as much money on his satellites as the existing guys to achieve it. That’s why he charges US$100 per month which is double the service charge of his competition on the ground.
His latest foray into business jets is the same. Viasat charge $5-$11K per month, Elon $11-$25K per month for a private jet.
So faster doesn’t come cheap with Elon’s, Starlink and even he is yet to launch a viable system for the major airline world. Being up against the incumbent satellite guys who dominate with 5 and 10 year contracts it’s not that simple. Starlink’s pilot program on the JSX 20 seater aircraft shows it is faster, and as a private charter operator they pay the bill.
Serving 200-400 passengers on an airliner using the same link, the jury is still out on that one and we have yet to see a solution.
So don’t expect faster Wifi in an aircraft to get dramatically cheaper. Somehow they need to recoup the horrendously high cost of the satellite network, equipment and installations, so free is a dirty word. Someone has to pay.
Having said that, like Delta who reportedly are spending $1 Billion to offer free Wifi to thier frequent flyers, sooner or later every major airline will have to offer at least free text to their frequent flyers. Unfortunately not every airline has the power and profitability of Delta to pay the bill, so many will not.
It’s the reason why of the 28,000 airliners in operation, after 14 years of service only 10,000 have Wifi. The airline Wifi model is broken. Fact is, no one has made money on inflight Wifi except private jets, as they pay.
Ultra Low Cost Airlines who carry leisure traveler’s know passengers won’t pay for Wifi and this is why we invented fflya based on Bluetooth and the new proven Iridium satellites.
How does fflya solve this problem for low cost airlines?
We don’t use Wifi and leave the internet on the ground. Effectively we only deliver Telco 3G services like sms and text messaging that doesn’t need broadband. Wifi Internet is the worst possible thing you can send via satellite. It’s slow and costly compared to the ground.
People just want to stay in contact, so we invented networks and apps that talk Bluetooth to the ground, then convert it and deliver it via Telco’s to someone phone.
The end result is, our average satellite message size is just 100 bits if data. If you use WhatsApp on Wifi and the Internet, your average message is 7000 bits.
So 70 times the cost and that’s not including the cost of internet chatting WiFi apps must do in background to stay alive.
You can recoup the cost if 100 bits from a sponsor, but not 7000 and we don’t need $250K-$1 million dollars worth of equipment and 700 hours of installation to do it.
Our Gen 2 system, which we will soon release, is $15K and installed in 8 hours.
The best way to look at it is, Wifi is the equivalent of business class seats. All major airlines have to have it to appease their most important traveler’s, but unlike business class, no different to why they offer free movies, you can’t charge them a premium to use it.
On Low Cost Airlines everything is charged, so offering free internet does nothing for them. If you give passengers Wifi and free internet all they will do is bring Facebook, Google, Amazon and WhatsApp into the aircraft, who will harvest their passengers data and sell their products.
By not activating Wifi and leaving the internet on the ground, a passengers only contact with the outside world is via our Bluetooth walled garden, our messaging services and our data, using our embedded software inside the airline booking app. That also solves the major problem of launching any new app or service, the high cost of acquiring new subscribers.
When they download the airline app we get instant access to millions on new subscribers every month. That can add up to billions of advertising impression as they navigate the app, and an exclusive selling opportunity for our products and services while captive for 2-4 hours.
That’s why FFlya is the only change in inflight connectivity in 20 years.
Finally, launching any new invention with a multibillion airline like Wizz takes patience and time. With 6 aircraft in full operation and more in process, it’s only a matter of time until we complete the initial fleet.
This is our focus. Get number one right and like business class seats the rest will follow.
I will update you further on our progress ASAP.
