Japan Airlines inflight wifi service, JAL Sky Wifi, is so much of a better value than All Nippon Airways' ANA Wifi Service, that there is simply no comparison. For $21.95US ($19.75 if you pay with a JAL credit card), you can have unlimited internet for 24 hours.
ANA charges slightly more, $24US, for which you get 20MB.
Yes, 20 whole Megabytes. That's all. Once you use that up, you can buy more. What a joke. The only way ANA would be a better value is if you just needed to urgently check an email. You could buy the 5MB plan and hope there are not automatically downloaded attachments. The routes on which ANA Wifi Service is available is also not set. There are a total of only 3 planes that are equipped.
ANA Wifi Service
- Provider: on air
- Routes: Not fixed; available only on three planes: two 777-300ER and one 767-300ER; You cannot confirm whether service is available before boarding.
- Price: 5MB $6; 10MB $12; 20MB $24.
JAL Sky Wifi
- Provider: T-Mobile
- Routes: New York (JL005/006), Chicago, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Jakarta, London Paris (JL045/046)
- Price: 1 hour $11.95 ($10.75); 24 hours $21.95 ($19.75)
Japan Airlines air fares have become much more competitive in recent years, too. For a Tokyo-San Francisco round-trip flight last summer, I got a better deal on JAL than I would have if I had flown Singapore (which is usually the low-cost leader among Asia-based carriers).
ReplyDeleteWould love to see the WiFi service offered on the Haneda-SFO route.
Okay, so I went to a different store and told them I had my friend's old DoCoMo Galaxy S3 at home and wanted to use it. They gave me a micro sim and changed me over to the Xi plan no questions asked. I am happy to report my American Play Store bought N5 works perfectly including LTE on DoCoMo's network here in Okinawa.
ReplyDeleteI had the 'pleasure' of experiencing T-Mobile's service on a recent Lufthansa/ANA codeshare flight from Frankfurt to Narita. While there is little point in arguing the price, which I agree is quite fair for around 20quid, the service was absolutely horrendous. Access to the internet was extremely unsteady, slow and had an awful ping, which made it extremely unpleasant to even check news sites.
ReplyDeleteIf the service level is like this, I feel that there is little point in whether they charge you 10 or 100 quid, as I am not willing to pay for this at all. When checking out http://www.onair.aero/en/commercial-airlines-products, I found out that they a service that allows you to browse the local entertainment content on your own device. We would of course need to see how this plays out under real life conditions, but I would be more than happy if I was no longer dependent on the low quality screens of an airplane, and could you use my own preferred gadget for viewing/listening.
That is being included in a lot of new planes. I think the JAL 787-800s and the 777-300 "sky suites" let you plug your device straight in and watch your own content. Actually, JAL has a very good audio and video selection relative to many other carriers.
ReplyDeleteI found this live on NH1 from IAD-NRT last week. Was planning on sleeping through most of the flight anyhow so was not even tempted.
ReplyDeleteDavid Van Cleef, do I have any hope at all about using the Nexus 5 either the NEXUS 5 D820(US) or D821(International) to operate with 3g voice and data with KDDI/AU?
ReplyDeleteDavid Van Cleef, do I have any hope at all about using the Nexus 5 either the NEXUS 5 D820(US) or D821(International) to operate with 3g voice and data with KDDI/AU?
ReplyDeleteHello, I want to ask, what is the difference between
ReplyDelete1. Nexus 5 Emobile version (http://www.amazon.co.jp/%EF%BC%88%E2%80%BBSIM%E3%83%95%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%EF%BC%89-EMOBILE%E7%89%88-Nexus-5-16GB-EM01L%EF%BC%88LG-D821%EF%BC%89-%E3%83%9B%E3%83%AF%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88-%E7%99%BD%E3%83%AD%E3%83%A0/dp/B00GQR0MEU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403333759&sr=8-1&keywords=nexus5#productDetails)
2. Nexus 5 on Google Play Store
The Emobile version is 4000 yen cheaper than the google play store version one.
The E-Mobile version is gutted in terms of cellular radios. You wouldn't be able to use it much outside Japan, where as the Play Store version is much more useful.
ReplyDeleteReally? As far as I know the hardware is identical and so are the factory images. Even the baseband versions are exactly same irrespective of Emobile version of GP version. Both the GP Japan version and Emobile versions are D821 so no difference.
ReplyDeleteNexus 5 EM01L --> http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=5254&c=lg_google_nexus_5_lte-a_em01l
ReplyDeleteNexus 5 D821 --> http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=specs&id=5248&c=lg_d821_nexus_5_lte-a_16gb
I don't own either, so I don't know whether or not they're the same phone, but I consider PDAdb to normally be pretty accurate.
If that is correct, then the emobile version won't work on their 1700mhz umts network, only on softbank's 2100mhz network.
ReplyDeleteYes, I would consider pdadb to be accurate. However, in case of EM01L spec sheet, it does say that the datasheet state is "Preliminary".
ReplyDeleteI have an EM01L that I am using on the Docomo network and quite sure that it works well in FOMA Plus area (UMTS Band 6)
Since the preliminary sheet does not mention UMTS Band 6 to be part of EM01L, I would assume that the Nexus 5 data sheet with datasheet state as "Final" is what is applicable to the Nexus 5 from Emobile as well.