Hands on with Qantas inflight Wi-Fi

Alex Choros - Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor

Last updated 18 April 2017

I lucked out over the long weekend and ended on Qantas' first Wi-Fi enabled Boeing 737 for a flight back to Sydney. Despite the fact that the service is still technically in beta, I actually had a great experience. I had connectivity the entire flight, download speeds were consistently high, and I got to enjoy the somewhat novel experience of tweeting from the sky.

Woo! Ended up on the @Qantas Wi-Fi plane pic.twitter.com/EtF0p4rKg3
— Alex Choros (@a_choros) April 17, 2017

From a pure numbers perspective, my download speeds ranged from between 30Mbps to 43Mbps; far above Qantas' advertised speeds of 20Mbps. I'm guessing this is because other travellers weren't actually using the Wi-Fi. Upload speeds were far slower, measuring in at a paltry 0.56Mbps. I was still able to upload a ten second video to Instagram, but the process wasn't exactly quick. Ping was also a bit of an issue, and consistently over 1000 milliseconds.

While high latency isn't surprising given that Qantas Wi-Fi is powered by satellite, it does make the overall experience feel slower than it is. Web pages will take a few extra seconds to even start loading, for example. Any online gaming would be next to impossible.

In terms of actual use, the whole experience was quite seamless. I spent my entire flight alternating between streaming through Apple Music and streaming through Netflix, and did so without interruption. Higher latency aside, it was like I never lost my phone's 4G connectivity. I’ve paid for access to worse Wi-Fi in the past, so the fact Qantas isn’t charging is a nice bonus.

There's certainly virtue to having a few hours without connectivity - it's nice not to be contactable - but inflight Wi-F is equally nice to have. Especially when it works as well as Qantas’. I wouldn’t describe inflight Wi-Fi as a necessity, but I’m nonetheless looking forward to seeing more Qantas planes kitted out with connectivity.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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