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When you think about it, air travel really isn't all that great. I mean,

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sure, you can get from New York to LA in 6 hours. But unlike driving where you

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can pull off the highway and hit up the nearest Arby's when you get a hankering,

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when you're on a plane, you're basically crammed into a 500 mph glorified bus

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with wings and a bunch of sweaty strangers. And if you decided to step

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out for a snack, well, I hope you packed your parachute. But even though the

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airlines have been hitting us over the head recently with bag fees and

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disappointing food offerings, they have at least tried to make flying a little

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more tolerable by offering us inflight

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wireless internet. Huzzah.

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But how exactly does Wi-Fi work when

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you're six miles off the ground? Why is

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it so spotty? And is it possible to make

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it better in the future? Well, when inflight Wi-Fi first became a thing in

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the early to mid 2000s, it usually worked by beaming an internet connection

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to a transponder attached to the plane using satellites, similar to how folks

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in rural areas without cable, DSL or fiber infrastructure use satellite

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dishes to get online. Today these systems are still in use along with

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another system called airto ground transmission or ATG. This takes the form

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of towers similar to cell phone towers which have the advantage of being a lot

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cheaper than satellite internet but they

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obviously only work over land. I haven't

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seen any floating cell phone towers on open barges yet. And there are other

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disadvantages too. Not only do these towers suffer from geographical

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restrictions, but the service they provide can be painfully slow. As anyone

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who's ever tried to stream anything on a plane probably knows. In the US, for

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example, there's only a 3 megahertz

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slice of the radio spectrum assigned to

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airline internet. So you compare that to the average home Wi-Fi connection which

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can use anywhere from 20 to 160

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megahertz. So this ends up meaning then that ATG

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systems don't provide great speeds usually somewhere in the neighborhood of

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about 5 megabit per second. Satellite internet is faster with speeds of up to

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50 megabit per second on what's called the coup band, which is the same range

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of spectrum used to be satellite TV to your house. But with how many people can

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fly on an average commercial airliner like the Boeing 737 at once, even a 50

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megabit connection can mean doing something as simple as downloading a

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word document can be frustratingly slow if lots of passengers are connected at

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the same time. One of the reasons, aside

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from the usual corporate greed, that Wi-Fi costs extra on your flight. And

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current tech also requires airlines to bolt bulky antennas onto their planes.

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These are heavy enough to have a significant effect on the plane's weight

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and aerodynamics, meaning higher fuel costs, which are passed along to you,

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the poor sucker who's just trying to fly home for Christmas.

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But the days of inevitably crappy in-flight internet may finally be

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numbered as major air carriers are now starting to install CAB band KA band

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satellite antennas which have the potential due to their higher bandwidth

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to reach hundreds of megabytes per second enough for streaming even on a

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crowded plane where lots of people are trying to connect. In fact, JetBlue in

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the United States has already deployed the new tech on some of its planes. So,

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keep an eye out if you'll be using them to get to your final destination. And

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even better than that, actually, some of the new CAB band antennas, such as one

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being developed by the Kimeta Corporation in Washington State, are

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much thinner and less power hungry than their predecessors, encouraging airlines

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to install them on more planes without having to worry about how they'll affect

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flight performance. So maybe one day soon you'll be able to live stream your

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next transcontinental flight and show your captivated audience just how

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appalling the condition of the lavatory really is. Speaking of the lavatory,

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us section. So, thanks for watching, guys. If you like this video, like it.

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