Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kortilla 2523 days ago
>although selling WiFi for 12$ per hour isn’t either

Care to elaborate on this? WiFi on a plane isn’t any kind of thing people are dependent on to survive and satellites are pretty expensive. Airplane WiFi is entirely a luxury good.

Do you feel that charging $12 to watch a movie in a theatre is unethical as well? How about $150k for a Porsche?

2 comments

The problem is airplane WiFi has a captive audience with no competition so they can charge unfair rates and there is no free market to balance it.
So if you go to the top of a mountain and there is a single cabin selling water there, at outrageous prices, you would just help yourself to one bottle, because hey, no competition, captive audience.
The problem is that it’s $12 for an hour, regardless of whether you end up using it, or whether it works at all (do you get a guaranteed bandwidth along with that, and is there some BS filter that’s gonna interfere with certain sites or protocols despite you having paid?).

Finally it’s just way too expensive at that price.