Wi-Fi spacecraft launch

On Wednesday night, a new Europe-wide wi-fi service for aeroplanes came a step closer with the launch of a key satellite from French Guiana. Airline passengers will soon be able to connect to the internet either through this spacecraft or a complementary system of cell towers on the ground. The company behind the European Aviation Network is Inmarsat, the UK's biggest satellite operator.

Inmarsat claims to have all EU member state space permissions (including from Norway and Switzerland), and is awaiting just three licences for the operation of the ground tower network - from Germany, France and the UK.

Background

Inmarsat is building the system in tandem with Deutsche Telekom of Germany. They are hoping to start services at the back end of the year, with IAG Group (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia and Vueling) being the first to equip their planes with the necessary equipment. Lufthansa will be trialling too.

The set-up

This would include an antenna on the top of aircraft to connect upwards to space, and another terminal in the belly of the plane to link down to what initially will be 300 4G-LTE towers concentrated along Europe's main short-haul routes. The hybrid system would be a first for the continent.

Passengers in the cabin wanting to surf the web or watch a video would simply join a hotspot as they would if they were in a cafe or a hotel.

Deutsche Telekom has still to switch on the ground segment and debug it; and the new satellite, launched on an Ariane rocket from Kourou on Wednesday, will take three to four months to commission.

Analysis

There is no doubt there is a huge demand for good wi-fi in the sky. But many people who've used the internet onboard in an aeroplane may well have a less than favourable view of the experience: low speeds, delays in pages loading, and, significantly, a high cost compared with what can be purchased in a café on the ground.

The new EU-wide system on which Inmarsat and Deutsche Telekom are partnering is designed to tackle all these flaws. By getting planes to link to ground cell towers should significantly increase speeds - to allow even streaming video in the aircraft seat - while at the same time transforming the cost-per-bit economics of onboard wi-fi.

But you still need a satellite to fill in any gaps in cell coverage, and to pick up customers' connections when their planes head out of Europe and over the ocean on long-haul flights.

For Lufthansa, which will be the first carrier to offer the network - it has done survey work in which two-thirds of customers say good connectivity will influence the airline they choose.

By 2020/21, Viasat and Eutelsat intend to put above Europe the most powerful satellite ever built, which will have a total throughput of 1 Terabit per second. This, will offer far superior connections to planes than the EAN, but fear airlines may be about to lock themselves into an inferior service that was developed under a false prospectus. 

Assessment

Our assessment is that, technology is transforming innovation at its core, allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds and prices that were unimaginable even a decade ago. Wi-fi on planes traditionally had a wretched reputation, but the technologies are changing and the user experience is fast improving