Inflight use of data and telephony puts India in the league of nations but where’s the etiquetteIJ
living in a crowded country, many Indians have a different attitude towards private and public spaces when compared to those in the West. This leads to many etiquette fails, as some would call them. One of them is the annoying habit to continue conversations on the mobile phone while getting into a crowded lift. Heck, we tend to carry on conversations on our phones, loud ones at that, in all sorts of closed, confined spaces without a care in the world about other people. Which is why some domestic flyers are understandably paranoid about the implications of the decision by the Telecom Commission to allow on-board telephony and data usage on flights. With our bad habits, this can lead to hitherto peaceful flights becoming a cacophonic disaster, so much so that some people will start missing the days when the only noise was that of a screaming toddler.
Of course, things do not have to be so bad. On-board services of data and connectivity will not be cheap for the airlines to install; prices that flyers will pay, at least in the initial years, will be steep. Benchmark prices from international markets would put a typical 50MB plan onboard at least at Rs 500, if not much more. That amount of data, while enough to post updates on social media and to send and receive emails, is not enough to watch streaming videos or even download too many pictures. Additionally, most airlines block voice calls through messaging apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage. Also, it is almost certain that if on-board voice telephony is allowed, it will be expensive — benchmark prices would have per-minute prices at over one dollar a minute (Rs 65 per minute) if not more — making calls an expensive proposition. It is also most likely that users will need to have some sort of additional plan, which could be international roaming or some such package to be able to make and receive calls on-board a plane. At such rate, some pre-paid users could finish their balance on even a short call. The hope is that the steep prices will keep people away from misusing this service and sharing their conversations with the entire plane. It is also hoped that airlines in India will expend some energy in trying to educate their flyers about etiquette. Another fear is that users could watch inappropriate content on-board a flight; and it might be necessary for the airlines and service providers on-board to have a ‘closed garden’ for in-flight data even if that violates the norms of net neutrality. Indeed in the United States, net neutrality norms do not apply for onboard WiFi. One can only hope that after a few months, everyone learns some basic norms of etiquette for on-board data and telephony. But we still talk in crowded elevators, so some might say that we are incapable of learning!