The Future of Connectivity: Airlines Examine the Critical Second Chapter for IFC

FREE

While many point to Delta Air Lines as the big breakthrough to free-to-the-passenger IFC, the concept was really pioneered by JetBlue and their partner Viasat. Southwest offered free service to their A-List Preferred Passengers as well. Never-the-less, the push is on for every airline to consider free IFC as a destiny, not if but when. This sentiment was prevalent in comments from all the panelists. Some stated that while free for the US free was inevitable, the rest of world might not get there as quickly.

The big question remains, how to afford it. And the big challenge remains, can the network support it reliably.

Delta spent over a billion dollars refitting with Viasat in their belief that Intelsat could not deliver their vision of a free service. Delta has focused on Skymiles subscription along with some degree of personalization with portal partners, notably T-Mobile. Panelists point to the Delta offering as a market inflection point.

How passengers identify themselves, whether entering logon credentials, name and seat, or by an embedded profile tie into personalization opportunities. I surmise that user device profile will yield the greatest opportunity.

Panelists seemed skeptical that ad revenues would be sufficient to offset the cost of a free IFC service offering. Sponsorship has its limits. Seamless Air Alliance cataloged all the possibilities for ancillary revenue, where concierge services emerged with the highest revenue potential plus synergy to airlines and travel. No doubt, the airlines seem to be at the early stages of this journey.

A wild card remains non-passenger connectivity. Connexion-by-Boeing made many claims that this avenue would pave the way. Yet, connected airplane applications were widely deployed starting with the 747-400 a decade before CbB and found that most non-passenger applications were already being served over narrowband L-band and VHF data link. Today the electronic flight bag (EFB) has become the wellspring for pilot applications. No doubt, IFC will open the door to high bandwidth applications, but these must be balanced against what is time critical Versus what can be communicated while the airplane is on the ground.

Cybersecurity and Privacy

Personalization efforts are encumbered with cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Passengers must trust the service for them to share their information. Violating that trust can have long-standing impacts. Passengers must feel safe.

Personalization is not limited to the Portal, it can also become a factor with cabin crew tools. That becomes another dimension for privacy and the “creepy” factor.

Passenger Engagement (Take Rate)

No panelist would quote take rates. Historically (for fleet-wide averages), pay-as-you-go IFC struggles to get much more than 10% engagement; free text messaging on the order of 20%; and a free service with user manual login around 40%.

The only technology that will exceed 75% take rate is roaming, where the user device automatically logs in (Cellular, Passpoint). The original concept of onboard cellular roaming was promoted by AeroMobile and SITA OnAir using cellular mobile base stations.

Now we are talking about using Wi-Fi signal-in-space alongside 802.1x authentication (EAP-TLS, EAP-SIM, EAP-AKA) methods relying on a secure profile stored on the user device. Seamless Air Alliance has been promoting this concept since its inception in 2018, yet the marketplace has not engaged.

Cellular operators can deploy user profiles easily, where the cellular operate is the identity provider. It is possible to associate airline frequent flier accounts to cellular profiles by back-office integration. The airline can still relate to their passengers even if they login using their cellular account. Airlines can themselves become identity providers and deploy profiles using their own mobile application. These concepts provide a secure connection (WPA2/WPA3) and a key to strong personalization.

Finding the Portal

Having connected their device to the Wi-Fi network does not mean that the Portal is readily available. This has remained a surprising challenge to this day.

Seamless Air Alliance has recognized the need to document best practices for reliably getting passengers to the Portal.

BYOD or Seatback Screen

The panelists were split on the need for seatback screens. There was agreement that it was most likely to be retained on long-haul flights. What serves the portal, IFE, and IFC best?

Inseat power is an essential offset to bring-your-own-device (BYOD). Passengers are reticent to arrive at their destination with a dead cellphone through its use onboard for IFEC (the kiss of death).

Are you delivering a good service?

Airlines readily admit that existing service level agreements (SLA) with IFC providers have not aligned to good passenger quality of experience (QoE). There is more to QoE than network quality of service (QoS). It gets to device type, client and server applications.

Airlines want a consistently satisfying passenger experience. Yet every airline is aware of flights that do not deliver. Setting expectations for the passenger, such as knowing service coverage may be lost on a particular flight, can offload passenger frustration.

Seamless Air Alliance has published a discussion around SLA.

Seamless Air Alliance has announced the Viper service that provides airlines QoE measurements and scoring.

LEO/MEO and Hybrid LEO/MEO/GEO

Truly the focus of the webinar revolves around the emergence of LEO. Panelists lamented the challenges of making commitments to a particular solution for seven or more years when new solutions are emerging. This has always been the case for IFC and remains likely, at least for the next decade.

Panelists are concerned that LEO might not work out. Hybrid offers a backup solution. Specific concerns about eventual congestion on LEO channels. There was mostly attention directed towards Starlink with best effort service offering. There was little discussion around other LEO solutions (e.g., OneWeb and emerging Telesat) that are not serving direct to home (DTH) alongside aero.

Panelists are concerned about LEO coverage across their flight routes, that some countries may not allow a particular LEO service and create gaps. This issue is more easily addressed by GEO, where service offerings can be aligned more readily to a given nation.

Panelists are concerned about the reliability of electronically steerable antennas (ESA). There was recognition that true dual-beam hybrid (simultaneous LEO and GEO) may be the best solution.

Panelists are attracted to the true global coverage possible with LEO. There was no mention of highly elliptical orbits (HEO) that can extend GEO coverage to high latitudes. Not every airline operates in high latitudes.

Seamless Air Alliance Architecture and Interoperability Group has developed a satellite networks document for members that relates each candidate network characteristics. This group is also building a ten-year vision document to better understand the opportunities as they will emerge and what might be the end state.

Agnostic Onboard Terminal

Panelists are concerned about the high cost to equip their fleets with terminals. Most installations are designed to serve only a particular network service provider, requiring a remove and replace to go to a new service provider. There was much interest in the Airbus HBC+ project that provides a Ka-band or a Ku-band terminal that can be used by more than one service provider. Panelists want the airborne terminal to be like a cell phone, where the SIM card is the only thing to change when changing service providers.

ARINC standard provisions provide the simplest means to swap equipment.

Selecting IFC Service Provider

Panelists look for reliability and consistency, a good experience, and low cost as major factors in selecting an IFC service provider.

Seamless Air Alliance Airline Forum has brainstormed the dimensions for selecting an IFC service provider, which also gets to the portal and ease of change.

Second Chapter of IFC?

Take a moment to ponder the concept that we are entering the second chapter of IFC. It may be reasonable to project that the first chapter started with GEO satellite broadband and NGSO is the next chapter. But the reality has much more subtlety. Connecting passengers has been a dream for nearly 90 years! The first instance I am aware of was reported in 1937 on Northwest Airlines (Popular Mechanics, Vol 68 No. 3 page 383, I have the actual issue).

If I were writing a book about IFC (maybe I should!), I would say we are in about chapter 8.

Here are my initial thoughts on the IFC chapters and notable service providers. I had a chance to work on most of these systems, in some manner. Please, let me know what you think, what am I missing? The dates are roughly around service entry or publication.

Chapter 1: 1984 In seat Telephone (Airfone)

1997 Aircell

Chapter 2: 1998 IFC (Tenzing, Connexion-by-Boeing)

2003 Wi-Fi

Chapter 3: 2002 Onboard Cellular Roaming (Aeromobile, SITA OnAir)

Chapter 4: 2008 Gogo ATG

Chapter 5: 2009 Return of Ku/Ka GEO Wide-Beam Services (Row 44, Panasonic)

2010 ARINC 791 Part 1 - multigimbal antenna

Chapter 6: 2011 Ku/Ka Spot-Beam Services and Mega-Satellites (Viasat)

2013 ARINC 791 Part 2 – functionality

2015 Flat-Panel Antenna (Gogo/ThinKom 2Ku)

2018 ARINC 792 - dual apertures

Chapter 7: 2018 Return of Line-of-Sight (EAN, SkyFive)

Chapter 8: 2023 LEO/MEO NGSO, Type 2 LEO, Type 3 Hybrid Antennas (OneWeb, Starlink)

2022 ARINC 792 supplement 1 – multiple modems

2024 ARINC 791 part 3 - multibeam satellite networking

Chapter 9: 2025? Onboard Roaming – Cellular and Airline Identity Providers

Chapter 10: 2026? Dual-beam, Type 4 Hybrid Antennas

2026? ARINC 793 - multibeam antennas, fiber-optic, baseband signaling

Chapter 11: 2026? 3GPP Non-Terrestrial-Networks (NTN)

Stay tuned!

Peter Lemme

peter @ satcom.guru

Peter Lemme has been a leader in avionics engineering for 43 years. He is the thought leader to the Seamless Air Alliance. He offers independent consulting services largely focused on avionics and L, Ku, and Ka band satellite communications. Peter chaired the SAE-ITC AEEC Ku/Ka-band satcom subcommittee for more than ten years, developing ARINC 791 parts 1, 2, and 3; ARINC 792, Project Paper 793, and continues as a member. He also contributes to the Network Infrastructure and Interfaces (NIS) subcommittee.

Peter was Boeing avionics supervisor for 767 and 747-400 data link recording, data link reporting, and satellite communications. He was an FAA designated engineering representative (DER) for ACARS, satellite communications, DFDAU, DFDR, ACMS and printers. Peter was lead engineer for Thrust Management System (757, 767, 747-400), also supervisor for satellite communications for 777, and was manager of terminal-area projects (GLS, MLS, enhanced vision).

An instrument-rated private pilot, single engine land and sea, Peter has enjoyed perspectives from both operating and designing airplanes. Hundreds of hours of flight test analysis and thousands of hours in simulators have given him an appreciation for the many aspects that drive aviation; whether tandem complexity, policy, human, or technical; and the difficulties and challenges to achieving success.

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Saturday, December 7, 2024