internet – In-flight connectivity rather troublesome

The offer to use the temporary free internet access on the LH727, the flight I took with Lufthansa on May 23 from Shanghai to Munich, was too nice to refuse. Using the internet from an airplane is not much different from a coffee shop, but it is new, so why not?
When I try to get online after the take-off all things fail, I do feel a bit stupid, since you know that as a relative non-nerd, the nerdy types find always a way to put the blame on me. But when I plugged in the power cord of my laptop into the socket and got no power I got very worried. I decided to live on my battery for a while to avoid total embarrassment. “Hey, we have a journalist on board who does not know how to plug in his laptop.”
After a while I got a wireless signal in and I tried to connect: nothing happened. An error message urged me to get in touch with the manager of the network, but according to my assessment he had his headquarters in Seattle, and how should I get in touch 12,000 meters up in the sky and no internet connection?
A Dutch banker based in Shanghai in the seat next to me also could not get online, but he did have power. I asked a flight attendant first about my power problem. “Ah, I have to turn a switch,” she said. Two seconds later I had power. Do you also have a switch to give me internet access, I dared to ask. Heavy turbulence and a nice dinner stopped proceedings though.
Two of my fellows passengers had access I noted, and I tried with them to figure out why I and now two other passengers had no access. We tried everything, nothing worked. I turned to one of the flight attendants again. “I will get my colleague,” the first one said with a flare of panic in her eyes. “I do not know anything of this.” Half an hour later I got a more daring colleague. She looked at my laptop and said they were not allowed to touch my computer, even when I gave them permission. It sounded like she did not regret this management order.
In the end the score was 2:3, two addicts with a connection, three without. So, I cannot tell whether VOIP calls are possible; some claim they made those calls, others say they are blocked. Help, I need to connect, how did the world work without the internet in the past?
At Munich airport we had a wireless signal in the Lufthansa lobby, but now way to get access. In a business center I did find a cable, plugged in and nothing works. No staff around at six o’clock in the morning to help an internet junk.