Tenzing exec says his own product too expensive, seeing little use: The executive is almost ridiculously frank in this Wall Street Journal article. In fact, they can't afford to make mistakes in what he calls a "first release." The cost of deploying service into airplanes is so vastly expensive, that if the first release fails, there's little chance of a second.
Tenzing's solution appealed to the executives at domestic American airlines that had AirFone service because they could retrofit Tenzing into it. But it's a pretty messy method that allows only one user per row per side of the plane, and a lot of fumbling with modem settings and cables.
Words of wisdom from a Continental manager: "most of our customers would rather have an Internet connection -- that's the feedback we get". And this article doesn't even mention the primary problem: that most business users are required to use VPN connections to get their email securely, and the Tenzing solution requires using an email proxy on the plane. Which means that the most likely to pay can't use the service.
Boeing's service might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per plane to equip, but at $10 to $30 per user per flight, the airlines usage estimates based on capacity make it clear that they could gross that much per year per plane. Airlines that have adopted Connexion are putting it just on the longest-haul flights and on relatively few high-use planes. Connexion users get real Internet connections, which is apparently what everyone agrees is what those users want. [link via TechDirt]