High Speed Datalink for Aerial eMail
Is Latest Battlefield for Avionics Firms

The office in the sky will be reality with the Swift64 high speed service from Inmarsat.

The Battle of the Bandwidth for high speed internet access is being fought for the first time in public here at EBACE.

EMS Technologies, Honeywell and Rockwell Collins are all showing brand new black boxes that for the first time allow true inflight internet capability. Each is based on Inmarsat's Swift64 service, offering plug-and-play inflight web surfing of at least 64 Kbps (kilobytes per second) compared with today's snail's pace 2.4 Kbps.

"It's as good as you will get in an average hotel room," says John Uczekaj, head of business and regional airline avionics at Honeywell.

What has happened is that telecom and satellite operator Inmarsat (sharing Booth 7100 here with EMS Technologies) has adapted its 64 Kbps LAN-network technology to the relatively small aerospace market, using proprietary protocols and new compression technology to funnel a lot more information via the Aero-H and H+ satcom antennas in use today. It sells this service as Swift64.

Aero-H antenna can handle data.

EMS, Honeywell and Rockwell Collins have rushed to develop the black boxes necessary to take the enhanced signal from the Aero-H antenna and turn it into an ethernet connection for an onboard laptop. The results are being shown here for the first time at an international show, and product will be available within the next few weeks.

Operators with satcom systems and Aero-H antennas will need to buy only the black box offered by each manufacturer, plug it in and surf the web. In the future they can also look forward to streaming video and teleconferencing as well.