Air India might soon offer WiFi facility on the domestic flights. The company plans to kick-off the service with the Airbus A-320 planes. Air India plans on safely integrating WiFi equipment on board and is in talks with Airbus.
The company is yet to share the details on how fast the WiFi would work but is likely to offer a basic amount of bandwidth for free and higher speeds to the fliers paying extra amount for the service. The new move seems to be a new move to generate revenue for the company and other domestic airlines are also expected to follow the same path.
Air India Chief Ashwani Lohani in an interview with a national daily said “We are working on having Wi-Fi on our planes. We have issued expression of interest and will take the aircraft manufacturer’s nod to install Wi-Fi equipment. Though giving an exact date is difficult, we are aiming to start this by June or July.”
Currently no other domestic airline offers on board WiFi service, however foreign airlines are allowed to provide on board WiFi in Indian airspace only through domestic servers. If the domestic servers aren’t functional then the carriers have to keep the WiFi facility turned off, when flying in the Indian Airspace.
With the new services in the offing, the number of possible security breaches raises concerns. With numerous passengers in a single airplane with on board WiFi can allow hackers to intercept communication and breach systems. Users can escape this by designating the network as ‘public’ instead of using it as their ‘home’ network.
