Qantas WiFi Rollout Update
Qantas release and interesting post yesterday "This is your Wi-Fi speaking – update on Qantas inflight connectivity" with some updates on their WiFi deployment to the domestic fleet.
Both Qantas and Virgin have been trailing WiFi on one plane each since early April. I have been lucky enough to try the Virgin WiFi on a recent flight and was very impressed with the speed, I have yet to experience the Qantas WiFi but can only assume it is similar.
In the Qantas post, they announced they have completed the retrofit of a second aircraft B737 (VH-XZC) and plan to have a further 8 completed by September which is really exciting, having WiFi on short domestic flights makes them significantly more productive especially if you are commuting to work.
However, what made the Qantas article interesting was the insight in to the data they are capturing from the WiFi trail, whilst this is not surprising it is a real eye-opener and reminder that you want to ensure you are either browsing secure sites or using a VPN as Qantas are clearly logging a large amount of metadata.
Here is an excert from the article
Based on the stats they provide you can only assume that as part of the trail (and most likely go forward) Qantas are captuing the browsing behaviour and metadata of off devices that connect to the network.
I am somewhat surprised that Qantas choose to publish this information, but I am certainly not surprised they are collecting it.