Supposedly they didn't roll this out before because the bandwidth wasn't high enough for a satisfactory customer experience. Apparently they think they have the bandwidth now.

I hope they've programmed it to allowed company computers to have priority, because even with whatever blockers they have, half the flight will be streaming Netflix. Life...uh...finds a way.

Viasat is about to launch the 1st of 3 of their 3rd Generation Satellites in late March. All 3 will provide fast, high bandwidth internet globally. There might be bandwidth issues before the launch but should significantly improve as the Satellites launch.

https://www.viasat.com/space-innovation/satellite-fleet/viasat-3/

My understanding is that gogo was the main limiting factor. That technology just didn’t support the bandwidth necessary to have functional free Wi-Fi. They didn’t want to start the process until they had enough of the fleet converted to viasat so that customers wouldn’t have the Wi-Fi on half their flights become essentially unusable. My experience with the viasat since they turned on the trial has been somewhat limited, but I haven’t noticed any issues yet. Nothing like the RJ gogo which is basically useless.

200 people using on board WIFI would bog it down so bad I don't think you could get much of anything done, no? Is the WIFI that good now on planes?

I saw a post on a FB page of a guy saying he saw someone playing World of Warcraft on a free wifi trial flight. Must be ok for that knowing you must be constantly connected. Though if everyone is doing it, no idea on the bandwidth limits

JetBlue has had free fast internet for years via Viasat and no issues. I’ve streamed YouTube TV in the back of their planes. The precedent has already been set

The viasat internet is pretty fast. I've streamed stuff on our airplanes and it's been better than hotel internet. Pretty sure our IT people understand bandwidth sufficiently.

I watched a whole movie on Netflix on a DH the other day and never even glitched/froze up once, actually worked better than the onboard IFE does half the time.

Or you could read a book.

What happened to looking out the window and tracing your way across the country on highways and cities?

Or just working out life in your mind with some free thinking time (what we now call “mindfulness”)?