Virgin Australia begins testing its inflight Wi-Fi

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Try it free for three months

Hot on the heels of Qantas switching on its inflight Wi-Fi comes Virgin Australia’s announcement that it, too, has commenced testing of onboard internet for domestic flights – a trial which will take place for the next three months.

Starting today, the Wi-Fi service has been enabled on a single Boeing 737-800 aircraft and, like on Qantas, passengers can access video streaming services Netflix and Stan for free on their devices.

To provide flyers with high-speed internet while in the air, Virgin Australia has teamed up with Aussie telco Optus and inflight internet and entertainment provider Gogo.

Addressing the launch, John Thomas, Group Executive of Virgin Australia said that the airline was “thrilled to commence customer testing of our inflight Wi-Fi today.”  “We want to ensure that guests can stay reliably connected in the air while also enjoying the fantastic entertainment and customer service for which Virgin Australia is well known,” he stated.

High flyer

Passengers on the airline’s internet-enabled flight will be informed of the service’s availability and instructions will be provided on how to connect their devices.

Australian Business Traveller was on board the first test flight and clocked up download speeds of up to 20Mbps. In our recent tests with Qantas’ in-flight Wi-Fi, we found speeds hovered around the 12Mbps mark.

Other than Netflix and Stan, customers will also have access to music streaming service Pandora Plus, which will include a free three-month trial. Passengers with existing Netflix or Pandora accounts will reportedly be able to add those three months to their current subscriptions on the streaming services, but Virgin Australia has mentioned that terms and conditions will apply.

Virgin has not announced if access to the inflight Wi-Fi will continue to be free after the three-month trial period, but it has stated that it will “finalise its business model after considering customer feedback and the results of the testing period.”

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Sharmishta Sarkar
Sharmishta Sarkar
Managing Editor (APAC)

While she's happiest with a camera in her hand, Sharmishta's main priority is being TechRadar's APAC Managing Editor, looking after the day-to-day functioning of the Australian, New Zealand and Singapore editions of the site, steering everything from news and reviews to ecommerce content like deals and coupon codes. While she loves reviewing cameras and lenses when she can, she's also an avid reader and has become quite the expert on ereaders and E Ink writing tablets, having appeared on Singaporean radio to talk about these underrated devices. Other than her duties at TechRadar, she's also the Managing Editor of the Australian edition of Digital Camera World, and writes for Tom's Guide and T3.