V:Port - Ground to Air SMS

Does anyone know when V:Port will be updated to allow passengers to receive txt messages and e-mails from people on the ground?

The option is apparently 'Coming Soon', but it's been saying that since V:Port was first launched.

Was just curious

The past couple of flights I've traveled on with v:port appear to have offered this facility, though I didn't look very much into it. It requires a credit card swipe before giving any indication of prices, which coupled with the system acting up somewhat on the day, put me off checking it out further.

Both these flights were G-VHOT btw - VS007 (LHR-LAX) and VS008 (LAX-LHR).

Regards,
Barry

Does anyone have any pricing information?

I sent an air-to-ground SMS from G-VATL (NRT-LHR) yesterday which cost $2.50.

Curiously, I have only ever seen the option for two-way SMS on G-VHOT when I flew it between LHR and LAX in July/August. Given that those two flights also sufferred very unreliable V:port, I wonder if G-VHOT was running an upgraded V:port software that was buggy and hasn't been rolled out across the fleet yet. The other difference I noticed on G-VHOT was that the i:map showed the correct ETA (hours and minutes) instead of omitting the hours. The V:port on G-VHOT wouldn't give SMS pricing until after the card had been swiped - I didn't get pricing when I had the chance as the V:port was so unreliable I didn't want to risk swiping my card to find out...

Regards,
Barry