Internet Service Offered on Planes...

Southwest Airlines announced that it is going to test out a WiFi connection on its planes. Interestingly, it is not going to charge its passengers for the test.

This can have a positive and a negative effect. On the one hand, passengers can be more productive. Wasted hours spent traveling on planes can be turned into efficient time spent working. It is also another way to pass the time either through surfing the web, chatting with friends, etc…

On the other hand, those “slackers” who use flight time as an excuse for not doing work, will surely be disappointed when their boss expects them to be working during their flight. (Although companies should value their employees’ time and not make them work during unreasonable flight times).

Personally, I think this is a good idea. I think Southwest will have to be careful and explicitly state that passengers should be respectful of other passengers (i.e. certain applications are not recommended to be used- for instance, Skype). I also think they need to be careful with the quality of service. I wonder what consumers are going to say and how much Southwest is going to charge…

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