An email sent from one of the luxurious Boeing BBJs parked across the airfield at fixed-base operator TAG Aviation made a round trip of 45,000 miles via a geostationary satellite before entering the ground broadband network and ending up on a laptop in the Flight Daily News office.
Speeding it on its way was an Inmarsat SwiftBroadband installation from Canada’s EMS Satcom SwiftBroadband is the London-based mobile satellite operator’s latest service for aviation and it’s nominally rated at 432kbit/sec. But, during the last couple of months of full commercial operation aboard the VIP BBJ, the EMS combination of transceiver, cabin router and high-gain antenna has been pushing data through at as much as 0.5Mbit/sec.
The aircraft is used to transport top executives from the USA to destinations across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. “They can use SwiftBroadband for access to their corporate network on the ground,” says EMS Satcom’s Kate Murchison. “They just carry their wireless laptops on to the aircraft, switch them on and within moments they’re working just as if they were in the office – they don’t miss a beat.”
The SwiftBroadband channel – another is available but not yet activated – can also be used for two grades of voice service. “The AMBE-2 standard is competitive in price with the popular Iridium satellite voice service while offering higher quality,” says Murchison. “And if ultra-high quality is needed, SwiftBroadband can support voice over a 64kbit/sec ISDN channel.”
Other capabilities tested over the link in the last few months include teleconferencing and BlackBerry voice and email. “Users are very happy to be able to use this equipment in the Air,” comments Murchison. “And they could soon be joined by the iPhone, communicating via its built-in WiFi and the aircraft’s wireless LAN.”
While a single SwiftBroadband channel is currently enough for the BBJ operator’s needs, there is plenty of potential for extra bandwidth. The second channel could be activated and bonded with the first to produce an effective 1Mbit/sec of bandwidth, and from 2012 Inmarsat will allow up to four channels per aircraft.
Source: Flight International
