MIIT Announces It’s Technologically Possible to Surf the Net, Make Phone Calls on Planes (After Two Year Study)

Apparently lots of other countries and airlines have already implemented this more quickly without lots of bureaucratic red tape. Imagine that.

After a two year study, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has announced that even though people may not believe it, the basic technology required for passengers to surf the web while on planes is “basically mature.” In fact, the results of MIIT’s study have already borne fruit, as seen in Air China’s new wireless LAN intranet, which promises to revolutionize the airline industry in China by bringing customers an entirely new platform on which to peruse stale “entertainment” content and buy Skymall crap.

Given that airline operators in other countries have been offering real wireless internet on flights for years in some cases, we’re not sure why MIIT needed to conduct a two-year official study to conclude that it was possible. But they did, and (surprise) they found that it is! Hooray!

Of course, what’s holding you back from surfing real internet on your next flight is not that the technology is lacking, it’s that a suitable model for operation in China is lacking. Internet access requires political oversight and supervision (at least in China, though the rest of the world seems to be doing OK without it), so there needs to be an operational model that can serve the needs of both net users and regulatory government institutions like MIIT.

To that end, of course, experts are meeting and recommending suitable models for operation and we’re sure that after one is chosen, and another two-year study to determine whether or not it’s realistic, MIIT will declare it possible and roll out a trial system on the Air China flight to Chengdu. So, uh, hooray?

[Source: Sina Tech]