After an investment portfolio check, AT&T decided to cancel the In-flight Wifi plan. The reason behind is upgrading to 4G air-to-ground service is simply a costly investment that are not worth it, and the connectivity is not guaranteed to be the greatest and the most stable. Therefore, AT&T intended to focus its investment on big acquisitions, for example, DirecTV and mexican carrier lusacell.

However, the FCC is encouraging a better in-flight wifi services. Now, in the market, Gogo in-flight Internet would be the only company that provides in-flight wifi, and the speed of that is so slow that can only receive email. After the shut down of in-flight wifi plan of AT&T, Gogo’s price rises sky-high.

(Source of photo: http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2014-05-12/0512_gogo_970-630×420.jpg)

In my opinion, ending the plan of in-flight wifi services is not a smart action, because AT&T and Gogo are the oligopolies in the US in-flight wifi service market. AT&T was going to upgrade the wifi quality to 4G, which could easily be the monopoly of in-flight wifi, even though it could be a costly investment. As airplanes travelling get more and more common, AT&T could have a bright future in the long term.

On the other hand, investments in the DirecTV and mexican carrier lusacell are really conservative because other telecom companies would invest in similar investment. Thus, AT&T was not differentiated from the others. Hopefully, AT&T can make more risk-taking investments that are really beneficial, since its funds are more than available.

Bibliography:

Goldman, David. “AT&T Cancels Plans for In-flight Wi-Fi Network.”CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2014. <http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/10/technology/mobile/att-flight-wifi/index.html?iid=SF_BN_River>.