Hello, welcome to another MLEX podcast. I'm James Panicki, Mlex's Brussels managing editor, and here's a question for you.

How much do you want access to Wi-Fi when you're in flight?

It's not for everyone. There may be a few unusual people out there who actually want a bit of peace and quiet when they're on a plane, a bit of P and Q.

Others, though, would like to be able to connect when mid-air, whether it's to catch up on work or simply watch videos of cute kittens doing cute things, which is, after all, why the Internet was invented.

Now, the technology for this in the EU is there, or rather it's just around the corner, but there are regulatory questions as companies gear up

to invest millions in this kind of technology.

Loitering, as usual, at the intersection between technology and regulation, is Magnus Franklin,

Mlex's chief telecoms correspondent.

Hi, Magnus.

Hello, James.

Now, this dispute over the technology required to make this happen, and who gets to exploit that technology is going to end up in court.

But let's start from the very beginning.

Firstly, why is it taking airlines so long to install Wi-Fi?

I think you start off on a good question there.

Is it actually a place where we want Wi-Fi airplanes, or do we just want to have a safe space away from all the gadgets?

No, I mean, there's a lot of technology that's had to be developed, and it wasn't until about

2014 that company started making a proposition that could actually make this happen.

There's challenges, there's technical challenges, airplanes move very quickly, and there are

distance challenges. They move

at the speed at very high altitude. So there's a technical challenge that has been overcome,

but now what companies are finding is that there is a legal and or, let's say, commercial,

competitive challenge as well. And now the technical challenges have been overcome in the sense

...