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Airline passengers pining for faster in-flight internet access anywhere in the world - even over the oceans - are about to get their wish as satellite operators find success where Boeing Co failed a decade ago.
Stronger, more-focused signals from spacecraft lofted by providers such as Intelsat SA will replace cobbled-together connections meant for mobile phones and television broadcasts. Costs will fall, too, eventually making onboard broadband a free amenity to win travellers' loyalty, industry executives say. The technology is poised to bring sweeping changes in airborne Wi-Fi, now marked by balky downloads, dead zones and scant public enthusiasm. ViaSat Inc, whose service will debut on JetBlue Airways Corp aircraft next month, promises more satellite-delivered bandwidth for each passenger than current market leader Gogo Inc can offer to an entire plane.
"Ten years ago, we used to use dial-up; nobody does that anymore," said Tim Mahoney, chief executive officer of the aerospace unit of Honeywell International Inc, a satellite-hardware supplier. "That evolution that we've gone through in our home setting is going to take place on the aircraft."
So-called spot beams from the new satellites deliver a more-concentrated signal than those blanketing a region with TV images. There's enough bandwidth for scores of fliers to share, with moving jets handed seamlessly from one beam to another. It's akin to connecting a Starbucks Corp coffee shop full of Wi-Fi users - if the store were zipping through the stratosphere.
Inmarsat Plc, which will pipe its signal through Honeywell equipment, plans to girdle the globe with three spot-beam satellites launched by 2014. Intelsat expects its first Epic satellite in space in 2015. By then, JetBlue plans to have ViaSat's Wi-Fi on all its planes, airline CEO Dave Barger said this week.
In-flight internet is available on only about 40 per cent of the US and Canadian airline fleets, said Jim Breen, a Boston-based William Blair & Co analyst. Usage is even less: Satellite provider Global Eagle Entertainment Inc estimates that only about five per cent of fliers on internet-enabled planes pay to hop online.
