Anyone who has ever been frustrated when attempting to
browse the Web while on a plane should be seeing some relief in coming months
as three major providers of WiFi for aircraft update their systems to achieve
substantially higher bandwidth.
The upgrades can’t come fast enough for business travelers
on a data leash or leisure travelers with an appetite for streaming video, who
know only too well that airplane WiFi — with the notable exception of JetBlue —
is almost always slow and unreliable.
In fact, in an analysis last January, the website
Routehappy, which ranks flight amenities worldwide, concluded that on just 1%
of flights was there WiFi fast enough to stream video. Only JetBlue flights and
portions of United Airlines’ domestic, Caribbean and North American fleet met
Routehappy’s “Best WiFi” standard.
But while, for now, across-the-board consistency in airline
WiFi remains a distant dream on most flights, major players in the industry
will soon be rolling out technology innovations that should make fast airplane
wireless connections more common.
The airline WiFi business in the U.S. is divvied up among
four primary suppliers: Global Eagle, Gogo, Panasonic Avionics and Thales. From
a numbers standpoint, Gogo is the industry leader, controlling more than 70% of
the domestic U.S. market share, according to company spokesman Steve Nolan.
Gogo’s air-to-ground and space-borne satellite systems are deployed on 11
airlines, including Delta’s and American’s domestic flights and a portion of
United’s domestic flights.
Space-borne satellite systems used by Global Eagle provide
service for Southwest as well as for several international carriers, including
Icelandair and low-cost Norwegian, both of which are among the international
leaders in the percentage of their fleets that offer WiFi.
Panasonic Avionics also employs satellite systems that
enable it to offer WiFi services to an international client list of 127
airlines. American and United use the company’s WiFi on international flights,
and United uses the Panasonic Avionics system for a portion of its domestic
routes.
From a service standpoint, however, Routehappy asserts that
all those companies are chasing Thales, the supplier that provides WiFi to JetBlue and those United
flights that meet Routehappy’s “Best WiFi” standard.
Thales works off space-borne Ka-band satellites, which
operate at a higher frequency than the Ku-band satellites used by Gogo, Global
Eagle and Panasonic Avionics. The company claims it delivers a bandwidth of 12
megabits per second (Mbps) to every device using the service on the planes it
equips.
“In my experience, it’s absolutely true,” said Jason
Rabinowitz, Routehappy’s data research manager. “I’m able to stream Netflix on
JetBlue flights. A lot of the time, I stream better on the flight than when I
get to my hotel.”
In contrast, Rabinowitz said, air-to-ground satellites offer
an average of 10 Mbps of bandwidth, and that total must be divided among all
devices using the service on an entire plane.
WiFi that employs Ku-band satellites offers more varying
experiences, he said, but generally performs at between 3 and 8 Mbps, also
divided across all the users on an aircraft.
The e-commerce managing director for United, which uses
Thales, Gogo and Panasonic Avionics for various types of routes, also said that
the technology used by Thales is the fastest the airline employs, though he
noted that the Ka-band service wasn’t an option for United’s transatlantic
routes.
“The Ka systems register the best download speeds of
anything we have equipped today,” said Tarek Abdel Halim, the airline’s
managing director of e-commerce, planning and development.
But within the next 12 months, Gogo, Global Eagle and
Panasonic Avionics all plan to roll out systems that they say will increase
bandwidth several-fold, offering the possibility of faster Internet
connectivity for passengers on Delta, American, Southwest, United and their
many other airline clients. In addition, the WiFi providers say, the improved
services won’t come at an additional cost.
First up will be Gogo, which last month received approval
from the FAA to begin flight testing its new 2Ku technology. The service
employs two antennas on aircraft, rather than one, to deliver more bandwidth.
Gogo’s Nolan said that planes equipped with 2Ku antennas will see peak WiFi
speeds of 70 Mbps, more than double what he said Gogo can offer on planes using
its single-antenna Ku service.
The 2Ku service is expected to go live late this year, and
Gogo said that seven airlines have already signed up to install 2Ku antennas on
a total of 500 planes. Delta alone is equipping more than 250 domestic aircraft
with 2Ku service.
The offering, Nolan said, should enable Gogo to change its
present pricing structure, in which WiFi prices are sometimes three or four
times higher on flights that have high WiFi demand than on flights that have
low demand. That pricing strategy, Nolan said, is designed to reduce WiFi usage
on the high-demand flights in order to increase the speed for those who still
purchase the service.
Upgrades from Global Eagle and Panasonic Avionics won’t be
far behind Gogo. Both companies said last week they are awaiting the deployment
of new satellites by their provider, SES, later this year.
Known as High-Throughout Satellites, they will enable Global
Eagle and Panasonic Avionics to deploy their WiFi signals via spot-beams
targeted at areas of the world that get the most airline traffic. That
deployment-efficient approach will enable Global Eagle to provide WiFi speeds
of 70 Mbps to its airline clients, including Southwest, said Kevin Trosian,
Global Eagle’s vice president of corporate development.
“That’s going to be a big upgrade for everyone,” Trosian
said.
Panasonic Avionics spokesman Brian Barwell used a much
bolder figure, asserting in an email that the beam will be able to deliver
bandwidth as high as 200 Mbps to airline clients such as United, American and
Lufthansa, while also lowering costs.
“We have already started phasing in reductions,” he said.
“In some cases, it has taken the form of more data for the same price.”
The new satellites are scheduled to launch over North
America and the Atlantic in early 2016 and over Europe later in the year.
Planes that receive the new spot-beam WiFi service should
benefit as soon as they are airborne, Trosian said.