Press Releases

Budapest, January 30, 2020 12:00

From January this year Telekom offers free access to onboard internet service on a trial basis for the company’s postpaid subscribers on specific flights of Lufthansa group.

"I will not be available in the next few hours because I will fly, but as soon as I land, I will call or text" - this sentence is told tens of thousands of times a day by travelers in Europe, altough several airline companies offer access to on-board internet at a certain charge. From now on Telekom’s postpaid subscribers who may use an unlimited number of connections to on-board internet free of charge, can say: "We will be flying soon, I have to hang off, but there is internet access on the plane so we can continue by chat or email." Thanks to the InFlight WiFi it is already self-explanatory both on Earth and in the air that we keep being in contact with the family and friends, and do not miss any news or events happening during our flight.

„Time has come that we can work on realizing our objectives without limitations wherever we are, no matter if these are business, community or private issues. Therefore we are the first among Hungarian telecommunication companies that ensure free InFlight Wifi access in air transportation – for the time being on 250 flights of Lufthansa Group - for its postpaid customers. We do our best to further extend this access in the future” – said Melinda Szabó, Chief Commercial Officer, Magyar Telekom.

From now on, postpaid Telekom subscribers can stay online by using the on-board internet on 250 flights of Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and Eurowings airlines, for the time being on a test basis, free of charge (except for the latest types of A320neo aircrafts). With the Telekom InFlight Wifi service eligible subscribers can, after an "onboarding" process, connect to the well known FlyNet service of the Lufthansa group, which ensures that they can connect to the internet during their flight. The service can be activated in the Telekom application by those residential and business subscribers of the company who have at least 1 active monthly mobile or home service and have downloaded the Telekom application before take-off. Lufthansa passengers can use the service for a fee, but Telekom’s postpaid subscribers can now try the InFlight Wifi service free of charge. In addition to the primary device on the flight passengers can also connect another device to the wifi network.

The speed of the on-board internet connection will primarily be sufficient to send and receive text messages and browsing, however, it cannot be guaranteed that video content can also  be played satisfactorily. The reason is that the onboard unit of the aircraft distributes the total bandwidth available on board amongst the passengers, so that each passenger may browse with approx. 600 kbps speed. While boarding and disembarking the on-board internet service is not available, but it automatically connects to the WiFi network at cruise altitude (provided that passengers have downloaded the Telekom application and have made the necessary settings in advance) and sends a relevant message to users on the availability of the service. The quality of the satellite connection can be affected by the weather and possibly by the route of the aircraft.

The service is currently satellite-based, and the European Aviation Network, developed in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom, will only be available to domestic airline passengers at a later date. This technology combines satellite services and terrestrial cellular networks to provide faster and better quality internet access in flight.

Adjustments / technical guide

Before boarding passengers can make the necessary adjustments depending on the operating system used by their smartphone. For travelers using the Android operating system, the app will automatically add a list of matching networks to the list of networks, then one only has to allow the use the GPS information and notifications for the app. For iOS operating systems, you must manually select which networks the app will add to your device's network list, and after the display of the permissions in the popup window the device will automatically connect to the network as soon as the flight reaches flight altitude. The necessary setup permissions are optional, but you should enable them to use this feature properly.
After boarding, when switching to airplane mode, which is a must when using Inflight Wifi, the app will notify the customer to turn on Wifi as in airplane mode it turns off.

After a successful Wi-Fi connection, one can open a magenta color button in the Telekom application's menu that contains the SSID name and password that one needs to enter into the other device to connect it to the network.

More details and conditions can be found by clicking here.