Teleglobe and Boeing have agreed to arrangements enabling the Connexion by Boeing business unit to provide satellite uplink and downlink ground station services to enable in-flight, high-speed Internet access service throughout the Pacific region.
Commercial airline operators and their passengers will receive in-flight real-time high-speed Internet access for email and data connectivity, as well as streaming audio and video services. The ground station services are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2005.
Teleglobe’s satellite ground station in Lake Cowichan, British Columbia, one of three earth stations operated by Teleglobe, will provide the uplink and downlink between the terrestrial Internet backbone and the satellites that maintain continuous Internet protocol connections with each airplane and its on-board ethernet or WiFi local area network.
Trans-Pacific passengers and staff connect to the public Internet and their company intranet just as if they were on the ground.
On May 17, Connexion by Boeing entered commercial service onboard Lufthansa Flight 452 from Munich to Los Angeles. The German carrier is currently equipping its long-haul aircraft with the Connexion by Boeing(SM) system.
In addition, ANA, Asiana Airlines, China Airlines, Japan Airlines, Korean Airlines, Scandinavian Airlines System and Singapore Airlines have announced they will begin offering the Connexion by Boeing high-speed in-flight Internet service on selected routes in the months ahead.
Roaming agreements also have been established to provide “WiFi in the Sky” to customers of Infonet MobileXpress, iPass, NTT Docomo Mzone and StarHub, all of which are terrestrial-based wireless hot spot and mobility service providers.
“Reliable real-time, high-speed Internet connectivity is a growing requirement for business and leisure travelers enduring 8-18 hour flights across the Pacific,” said Connexion by Boeing Vice President of Marketing and Direct Sales David Friedman.
“Through our partnership with Teleglobe, we now have the proven ability to securely anchor the in-flight data streams from the satellites to the terrestial network for our airlines customers who will begin offering the Connexion by Boeing service over the Pacific region in 2005.”
“With our inventory of over 40 teleport antennas and transponder capacity from leading global satellite operators, Teleglobe has long been a market-segment leader in satellite-based IP services connecting traditional earth-bound internet endpoints,” said Liam Strong, CEO of Teleglobe International Holdings.
“We are quite excited that our Lake Cowichan ground station is now enabling a pioneering ‘mobile internet in the sky’. Teleglobe is very proud of our partnership with Connexion by Boeing and we look forward to supporting their visionary in-flight Internet plans.”
