It's long been the bane of existence for business travellers wanting to do business in the skies - a lack of Internet for doing business - but that all could change with a new Telstra trial.

Fear not, weary travellers. Telstra has begun trialling the use of mobiles on planes, allowing users the ability to finally use its hefty 4G network to stream movies, or send and receive emails.

Skinet, as it's been dubbed, has been tested on mock flights between Melbourne and Sydney, and has has so far delivered fast speeds of up to 15mbps per second, which is not that far off the Coalition's guaranteed minimum 25mbps NBN speeds.

Telstra tested the service on a Cessna propellor plane and a private jet between the two capital cities, and special antennas have been erected on four phone towers between the two capitals to deliver broadband signals to passengers en route.

Telstra executive director Mike Wright said the testing had so far succeeded with flying colours, delivering fast web capabilities for customers.

“We’ve achieved some of the fastest (broadband) speeds in this configuration that anybody has been able to do in the world so far,’’ he said.

“You can do the things on the aircraft that you would be able to do if you were in a WiFi hotspot.”

Additional testing will continue later this year and it could be about two years before passengers would be able to use this technology on board if it is made available, buthe testing has not yet extended to include sending and receiving text messages and making phone calls.

“We will look to do additional tests later this year and take those results into account as we explore the possible economics around building a nationwide, commercial LTE network in the sky,” he said.

Qantas spokesman Tom Woodward said the airline was working with Telstra but had no plans to roll out wi-fi capabilities on flights yet.

“We work with Telstra on a range of IT programs and we’ll certainly be watching this development with interest, but we have no current plans to introduce wi-fi on Qantas flights,’’ he said.

Meanwhile Ovum research director David Kennedy said the service would have to be cheap for passengers to adopt it.

“Even in Australia, a domestic flight isn’t really that long so you have to wonder how much people are ­willing to pay just to stay in touch ­during those relatively short ­periods,” he said.

“I can see a certain type of business customer who will be prepared to entertain that but it’s hard to see the ordinary consumer doing it . . . unless it was fairly economical.”