SmartSky’s patented 4G technology uses ground-based, phased-array antennas that follow each aircraft with a narrow, electronically steerable beam. With two blade antennas mounted on the bottom of the fuselage, receive equipment, and Wi-Fi in the cabin, the on-board Internet experience will rival what passengers have at home.
Competition in the long-established air-to-ground (ATG) connectivity landscape in the United States has heated up over the past two days with announcements from startup SmartSky Networks and Gogo. On Wednesday, SmartSky’s patented 4G spectrum reuse radio system received approval from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), enabling the company to use an unlicensed portion of the 2.4 GHz spectrum band for in-flight connectivity.
Up in the air, sponsored promotions have been finding their way into the aircraft cabin. And although it’s still early days, increased onboard connectivity bandwidth is becoming a reality, opening up opportunities to develop creative partnerships that enhance the passenger experience. “The foundation of all this is the deployment of more bandwidth,” says Ash ElDifrawi, chief commercial officer for in-flight connectivity provider Gogo. “What you’re going to continue to see is more and more sponsorships as we move from a constrained to a more abundant environment of megabytes.”
The Chinese airline market continues to see double-digit growth in domestic and international passenger traffic, with thousands of aircraft needed to meet the demand over the next twenty years. According to Boeing, the Chinese domestic airline market is expected to become the world’s largest. With this onslaught of new travelers comes the need for Chinese airlines to provide inflight connectivity on par with the rest of the world. Although the regulatory process has so far moved at a deliberate rate, recent announcements suggest that more passengers on Chinese airlines will soon be online.
The sun isn’t just a big, bright orb in the sky; it’s an active star, emitting all sorts of radiation and particles. A solar event might give us a beautiful Aurora, but it could also wreak havoc with ground-based power grids, radio, satellite communications, GPS navigation and even air traffic control operations.
The appetite for binge-friendly streaming services like Netflix, Amazon or Hulu, over expensive cable or satellite TV packages, appears to be insatiable. “Streaming video has grown at such a rapid pace in North America that the leading service in 2015, Netflix, now has a greater share of traffic than all of streaming audio and video did five years ago,” says Dave Caputo, CEO of Sandvine, a broadband network solutions provider. Based on a recent Sandvine study, real-time entertainment streaming now accounts for more than 70 percent of evening Internet traffic in North America.
Gogo 2Ku Antenna. Photo: Gogo
Written for the Airline Passenger Experience Association
APEX Experience Magazine – December 2014/January 2015
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