Have you ever boarded a flight and failed to connect your device to Wi-Fi? This experience, which passengers are confronted with every day, is becoming a real problem for airlines and their customers – especially professionals. A new report from the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) shows there’s a simple fix that could help you resolve in-flight connectivity issues. With this plan, telecom players hope to put an end to the most commonly cited: the weakness of the signal, the high cost of the service or the outright inaccessibility of Wi-Fi when traveling by plane.
“Connectivity is fundamental to our daily lives today and Wi-Fi is the most widely used wireless connectivity technology in the world,” said Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the WBA. “The in-flight Wi-Fi experience needs to improve to allow vacationers and business travelers to access flight information, entertainment or social media. »
One of the main factors behind these connectivity issues is the captive portal method – the process by which passengers connect to the correct Wi-Fi, navigate to a landing page, determine the Wi-Fi plan that wish to buy, and finally register and pay. These are all barriers to entry that deter customers from taking advantage of onboard Wi-Fi services. This results in lower revenue for the airline and exasperated passengers.
The perfect time
A simple solution to this problem would be to implement the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Passpoint technology, also known as Hotspot 2.0, which facilitates automatic and secure connection to Wi-Fi networks for devices with a profile. appropriate subscription. Providing Passpoint subscriptions to passengers will allow them to not have to manually log in during the flight. Instead, passengers would be automatically authenticated upon entering the plane and immediately connected to a secure connection.
“Air travel is booming, with international traffic up 229.5% last year and total traffic up 76.2%, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Bruno Tomas, CTO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance.
“Now is the perfect time for airlines to take a fresh look at their inflight Wi-Fi experience. This report shows how they can use Passpoint and WBA OpenRoaming to eliminate complexity so passengers can take full advantage of all their inflight services. To ensure better connectivity on flights in the future, WBA will begin developing guidelines for the industry.
Source: ZDNet.com