Skip to main content

Thanks to Gogo, the dream (nightmare) of in-flight calling and texting will soon be real

cell phone airplane etiquette

You will soon be able to make calls and send text messages from the air. Or, put another way, you’ll soon have to listen to people talk on their freakin’ cell phones. All. Flight. Long.

Gogo, the company that brought us in-flight Wi-Fi and killed the “I’m traveling so I won’t be available for the rest of the day” excuse, is taking high flying connectivity a step further with a new service called Text & Talk, which lets you do exactly what the name implies.

Related Videos

Text & Talk will be baked in to Gogo’s mobile app for iPhone and Android devices, and will use Wi-Fi to let people stay connected during their flights. That means no roaming charges. Thanks to some technical wizardry, all texts and calls will come from your number – so you won’t have to manage a whole separate line just for staying in touch while flying.

As The Verge reports, Gogo doesn’t expect the “talk” part of Text & Talk to be available on domestic flights due to the fact that its airline partners don’t really want to let people do that. The text messaging part will likely be available on U.S. flights, while both calls and texting may be available on some international flights as well as flights used exclusively for business.

News of Talk & Text follows changes by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration that allow qualified airlines to let passengers use their personal electronics, including smartphones and tablets, during all portions of their flights. At the moment, JetBlue, Delta, United, and US Airways have received the FAA’s approval for “gate-to-gate” gadget use. Delta, United, and US Airways all offer Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi, as does Virgin America, Frontier, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, AirTran, and Air Canada – meaning Text & Talk will likely be available (in one form or another) on those flights.

Text & Talk is expected to launch by the end of this year, or early 2014. There’s no word on pricing yet, though we do know it’ll be an added cost on top of the regular in-flight Wi-Fi charge.

Editors' Recommendations

The entire Beats headphone and earbuds range is discounted right now
Beats

Amazon is slashing prices on every single style and model of the Beats headphone line. From Buds to Powerbeats to over-the-ear headphone, every style is on sale. That's not to say that every color is discounted though. Check out all the headphone deals options below and grab the Beats you've always wanted.
Beats Studio Buds -- $120, was $150

The Beats Studio Buds offer the core essentials you could need from earbuds you might wish to take to the gym or use while on a run. They have a custom acoustic platform that promises powerful and balanced sound. More importantly for outdoor use, there are two distinct listening modes -- Active Noise Cancelling for blocking out all environmental sounds along with a Transparency mode for when you do need to interact with the world once more. It's ideal for those times when you want to zone out at the gym before remembering you need to speak to someone once in a while. There's up to eight hours of listening time with up to 24 hours when you combine the charging case. The earphones are also IPX4-rated for sweat and water resistance.

Read more
Need a great charger for $100? I may have found the perfect one
Voltme Revo 140 GaN charger in black color with a green Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra against a white background.

Mobile phone companies have divided views on the topic of including a charger in the box. For consumers, choosing sides in this debate has been relatively effortless. While the act has univocally annoyed buyers — and swelled Apple’s revenue by over $6 billion — it has also led to a boom in multi-port chargers that make for a superior choice over multiple chargers.

As an act of rebellion, I have turned to using multi-port bricks that can also charge my MacBook along with most of the phones I use or review, and GaN chargers have served me well over time.

Read more
The 15 most important smartphones that changed the world forever
Huawei P30 Pro and P30

If there’s any piece of technology that has made a significant impact on the lives of everyone, it’s the cellular phone —  specifically, the smartphone. It’s literally a tiny computer that fits into your pocket, and brings a plethora of information, entertainment, and lets you capture visual memories or be productive wherever you go. Pretty much everyone has a smartphone these days, for better or for worse.

But have you ever thought about which smartphones have been the most important and influential ones that shaped the rest of the industry? Let’s take a look at what we consider to be the most important smartphones of all time.
iPhone (2007)

Read more