Boeing Connexion to shut down
Boeing is shutting down its in-flight internet Connexion service, calling it a drag on earnings. See reporting from the BBC (Boeing exits in-flight broadband), Infoworld (Boeing scraps in-flight Internet), and the Guardian (Boeing drops broadband service at cost of $320m)
The best mainstream reporting (really, the only real reporting) is from the International Herald-Tribune's Thomas Crampton (Boeing: In-flight Internet didn't fly on low demand), which quotes from distraught users who lament the loss of Skype in the air during long business flights and the occasional mile-high club version of World of Warcraft. Users are happy; it's just that there aren't that many of them, not enough to pay for the service.
Other blogs with coverage: Om Malik (Boeing Boeing Gone), Glenn Fleishmann (Connexion Down)
This will cost them $320m in one-time charges to write down the value of the Connexion assets.
The IHT article speculates that the service may go the way of Iridium, written off with assets bought at fire-sale prices and taken over by someone with a new business model (or a new marketing budget). Of course, if you're not allowed to take a laptop on board, there's not much market for services for it, but the low user count problems happened well before that.
I first wrote about Connexion in a Feb 2005 article Air Skype recounting an in-the-air conversation with Valdis Krebs.
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