I would like to think that UK satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat has been brought forward to everyone’s collective consciousness because of the flight path data of MH370 that was revealed not too long ago. Well, the company has just announced a renewed intention to improve inflight Wi-Fi connectivity across European skies thanks to a nine-figure investment.
Inmarsat has plans to hook up aircraft to the Internet using cellphone towers that are located on the ground, albeit these towers having been modified to point to the sky. In fact, a new spacecraft is set to augment this particular system so that passengers can experience unparalleled seamless Wi-Fi connectivity during their flight.
Apart from that, this hybrid network is also said to be able to play nice with a slew of other services, where it will include high-resilience communications which could be utilized by government agencies in security situations, as well as during disaster response scenarios. As part of its in-flight application, British Airways has been invited to discuss the relevant terms and conditions to be in the running as a launch customer.
This next generation mobile satellite communications network will be known as Global Xpress, where it is said to cost up to £1 billion ($1.6 billion) to implement. Approximately 300 towers are required to be set up across the EU nations in order to make this idea possible.
Filed in . Read more about WiFi.