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Today more than every people are dependant on constantly being connected. The western youth has been raised in an environment where social media is a must. The average adult who has smoothly adapted to the disruptive innovation of the internet, would also struggle to avoid this invention due to either business or personal reasons.
Therefore the sustaining innovation of either offering wifi or 4G connection, during flights, would be a huge success in terms of technological advancement.
For example the norwegian airline “Norwegian” is already a step ahead and offers free on-board wifi. To me this just provides proof that this sustaining innovation has large potential.
Even though such a project involves huge investments, for the network provider AT&T, it is an innovation with a bright future. Not to mention that it will most likely be offered as a premium service, when the project is initiated, in order to aggregate the investments and furthermore to make profits.
However it I expect this service, once it has been in action for enough years, to also be offered with a freemium option. I would imagine that in the future basic phone contracts will include 4G connection on planes however, in order to increase the amount of data available, the costumer will be asked to pay a higher price.
Norwegian passengers using the free wifi on-board.