Qantas in-flight email and SMS at sky high prices?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 25 March 2008 15:51

Opinion and Analysis

Qantas has announced that it’s finally delivering SMS and email services to passengers on selected domestic Australian flights by the end of 2008. Alarmingly they have issued no prices (suggesting it will be expensive), while US airlines will introduce in-flight broadband this year – on the cheap!
Very expensive access to SMS messaging and email will land onboard Qantas B767-300 and A330-200 domestic aircraft by year’s end, following successful testing of the service between April 2007 and January 2008.

Why do we say expensive? Because the Qantas press release cleverly avoids outlining any pricing whatsoever, other than to suggest your phone’s SIM card has a ‘global roaming account’ enabled for treacle-like GPRS speeds – which immediately makes me think of the sky high bills I’ve received in the past when travelling overseas and using my phone.

This means the service will likely be priced out of the range of most customers, only accessible to those who either have lots of money, or whose company has lots of money and is willing to pay inflight SMS and email charges.

This is the exact opposite of the strategy that American Airlines and Virgin America are implementing this year through Aircell GoGo, set to offer in-flight broadband at ‘up to 2Mbps’, priced at “US $12.95 for cross-country trips and US $9.95 for flights lasting three hours or less” – even letting you connect your office network via VPN!

But in backwards and slow Australia, high powered executives that simply MUST be contactable at all times on their Blackberry, phone or datacard equipped notebook computer, it’s a service they’ve never had before and will likely be quite popular.

Unfortunately, the general population will be as likely to use (or afford) this service as they would be becoming members of the mile-high club.

Qantas Executive General Manager, Mr John Borghetti, boasted that Qantas “had led the industry in evaluating the technology on a B767-300 aircraft between April 2007 and January 2008” – although we never did get Qantas offering the vastly superior Boeing Connexion in-flight wireless broadband service.

Connexion was incredibly sadly discontinued due to a lack of patronage, a weight of 181 kilograms/400 pounds for the equipment (making it too heavy for domestic flights) and possibly because it was launched a bit too early, even though the pricing actually was quite reasonable.

So, what does John Borghetti have to say in introducing what appears to be a very shamefully 20th century service for the end of 2008? Please read onto page 2.