Southwest Wi-Fi to filter for pornography

Posted on February 12th, 2009 by Harriet Baskas

Earlier this week, Southwest Airlines announced that it was finally testing in-flight Wi-Fi on two planes and plans to being testing the service on four planes in just a few weeks.

The service is provided by Row 44, which provides Wi-Fi via aircraft-to-satellite technology. The service will be free during an initial testing phase and will allow passengers to access the Internet via laptops, iPhone, and Wi-Fi enabled smart phones.

Cellular phone service won’t work with Southwest’s in-flight Wi-Fi service. And while VOIP will be blocked for passengers, it will be available for the cockpit and cabin crew.

That opens a lot of possibilities. Good and bad.

Also, while Southwest is heavily touting the fact that it’s wrapped one of its airplanes with a decal featuring the cover model from the 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, according to Row 44′s president and co-founder Gregg Fialcowitz, Southwest Airlines will be filtering on-board Wi-Fi to block sites that might contain pornography.

Sort of a mixed message there, don’t ya think?

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