Rich posts about in flight WiFi and the potential banning of VoIP on the planes.
First I'm old enough to remember the GTE Airphone and actually used it a lot in the90's, especially when they had their $1000 a year all you could talk plan. Back then I was flying about every three weeks cross country and after doing the math, found out that I could talk cheaper from the plane after month four or so than I could on the ground. It ended my "need" constantly flying only on red eyes.
Now fast forward to the Internet in the sky era. As someone who received a few "phone calls" on overnight flights between the west coast and Germany on Lufthansa and the Boeing Conexxion service, and also made a few, it sure came in handy so I'm not seeing the rub so much as others.
Consider this as a counter. What happens when you want to sleep and you have two "chaty" Charlie's of "chaty" Cathy's sitting behind you the entire flight? Is there any difference? Have you ever tried to tell them to be quiet, and that you want to a) sleep b) write the next great novel when the two people who never met before decide to tell their life story to one another...?
So given that argument of facts as my old argumentation professor would say, I ask "why not just ban all talking on airplanes?" I mean what's the difference between a cell phone like call on a plane and a chat from those two someones next to you. Both are noise?
Maybe we should just ban all talking on airplanes.....? NOT!
Comments