EBACE 2008: Connectivity - Surf’s up!

After a spectacular false dawn, broadband connectivity for business aviation is now a reality, as Brendan Gallagher discovers.

A lot of hopes were dashed when Connexion by Boeing shut up shop at the end of 2006. Several international airlines, and a growing fan club of business travellers, were sorry to lose a satellite broadband service that delivered robust Email, Internet and private network access from the airways above the oceans and wildernesses.

Also left high and dry was Rockwell Collins, which had based its eXchange offering for corporate aviation on the Connexion satellite system. The Connexion crash left business aircraft operators dependent on a single broadband provider – ARINC with its SKYLink Ku-band satellite offering.

The sector wasn’t wholly comfortable with a potential monopoly. And, as it turns out, service provision specialist ARINC could see advantages in having someone else run the equipment side of the business. Eighteen months later, ARINC and Rockwell Collins are happily married, while the market at large now enjoys a choice of three broadband offerings.

At the end of last year the two companies announced that they had teamed up to offer eXchange with service by SKYLink. Each partner is sticking to what it’s good at – service provision in the case of ARINC; avionics marketing, installation and support on the Rockwell Collins side. There’s a third partner: US satcoms manufacturer ViaSat, which builds the terminal and antenna hardware.

This trio currently serves about 70 Gulfstreams – the original SKYLink fleet – plus a Cessna Citation X, newly retrofitted with the first example of the definitive Rockwell Collins/ViaSat equipment package. A further 45 shipsets are on order.

But eXchange/SKYLink now faces competition from two quarters – the Inmarsat community, with its L-band satellite technology, and US air-to-ground provider Aircell, which will soon offer terrestrially based broadband in the United States and an Inmarsat-based solution for the rest of the world.

Geographical coverage will be the key to many of the decisions that aircraft operators make about connectivity in the coming few years. SKYLink is currently available across North America, most of Europe and the North Atlantic flight tracks, with the Caribbean and parts of South and Central America due to be added in the middle of the year. The Inmarsat-based offerings will be accessible around the world apart from the poles from the first half of next year.

Colorado-based Aircell plans to use its own avionics and network of ground cellular towers to cover the USA, while marketing Inmarsat-based hardware from Thrane & Thrane of Denmark to operators who need a high-data-rate capability further afield. The company says first deliveries to both types of customer are scheduled for the third quarter of the year.

The North American offering is based on the new Aircell Mobile Broadband Network (AMBN), which works with EV-DO cellular technology and is due to be introduced by Virgin America and trialled by American Airlines this year. Last month Aircell announced that it had completed the US-wide network and that it was fully ready for operation. It is designed to support email, Web and VPN access via passengers’ own wireless devices and a WiFi hotspot in the cabin.

The company has two AMBN equipment packages for business/VIP operators. The first, for air transport-sized aircraft, is due to be available before the end of September. It will come with a flat-fee service plan giving access to an unlimited number of passengers, with no restrictions on session time, number of logins or volume of data transferred. Operators selecting this system will receive six months of unlimited service for an introductory price of $1,495/month.

Due to be available in the second quarter of next year is a more compact package for medium and light business aircraft. Designed as an add-on to the company’s successful Axxess Iridium satellite-based communications system, it will comprise a single box no bigger than 4MCU. Service plans are to be announced later this year and can be expected to include a flat-fee/unlimited-access element as well as options for aircraft operators who don’t expect to make heavy use of the service.

The Thrane & Thrane SwiftBroadband satellite equipment will ultimately offer round-the-world voice and data connectivity at up to 432kbit/sec via Inmarsat’s geostationary satellites. SwiftBroadband service is currently available across the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia. It is to be extended to the Pacific in the first quarter of next year, assuming a successful launch of the third Inmarsat-4 spacecraft this summer.

The T&T terminal will be sold and supported by Aircell and its worldwide dealer and distributor network. Comprising two boxes – one 2MCU, the other 1MCU – it will come as standard with an intermediate-gain antenna supporting up to 332kbit/sec per channel. Operators deciding on a more complex high-gain antenna will be able to obtain the full 432kbit/sec. The system can be installed either as an Axxess add-on or in standalone form.

Other Inmarsat avionics players include Honeywell, which earlier this year was selected to supply its SwiftBroadband capability as standard for the Dassault Falcon 900, 2000 and 7X. Starting in the third quarter of the year, all new airframes from the three Falcon families will be delivered with the US avionics manufacturer’s MCS-7120 Inmarsat terminal and CG-710 cabin communications hub already installed.

In the airline world, Inmarsat service providers AeroMobile and OnAir are finally beginning to make headway with their onboard mobile phone services. While cracking air transport is their top priority, both have expressed interest in tackling business aviation in due course. Here at the show, however, is a vendor that’s offering onboard cellphone right now.

This is Denmark’s Satcom1, which specialises in integrating Inmarsat’s 64kbit/sec Swift 64 as well as SwiftBroadband with challenging applications such as videoconferencing aboard corporate and VIP aircraft. The company is developing Swift-based systems to allow passengers to communicate with the ground via their own mobile phones and BlackBerry-type devices.

Satcom 1 says it has carried out installations on a Boeing BBJ and on VIP versions of the Airbus A330 and A340, and that it’s talking to Dassault operators about putting the capability on their Falcon 2000s and 900s before the end of the year. The necessary aircraft equipment, which can support several phones simultaneously, comprises the JetLAN AR250 server/wireless router from NAT Seattle and Inmarsat Aero H+, Swift 64 or SwiftBroadband.

Corporate/VIP operators were among the first people in the world to benefit from a wired-in phone on the plane. But Internet access and the convenience of using a personal mobile phone in the air have been long time coming. At EBACE 2008 potential customers can take their pick from a range of real solutions.

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Source: Flight Daily News