Global Eagle Airconnect Ka Antenna one step nearer to certification

Telesat and Global Eagle have verified Global Eagle’s Airconnect Ka IFC terminal for use with the Telesat Lightspeed low-earth orbit (LEO) network.

Engineers carried out network simulations to determine the efficiency of the antenna at flight speed and to mimic the real-world experience of use cases requiring fibre-like latency and high-speed throughput from the aircraft, including online gaming, cloud-hosted applications, and content-rich social media.

The phase is the latest successful LEO demonstration following that those of October 2018, which were the first time an aircraft in flight had ever communicated at broadband speeds with a satellite operating at low earth orbit. Rigorous testing in multi-orbit configurations achieved round-trip latency of 19 ms, compared to traditional geostationary satellite (GEO) networks which experience over 600 ms of latency.

Tim Southard, Vice President Networks, Global Eagle stated: “Our Airconnect Ka system, in conjunction with the Telesat Lightspeed network, will enable airline passengers to play online games like Fortnite and Roblox, live stream video, upload high quality holiday pictures and videos to Instagram and zip through Salesforce and Outlook tasks, as they would on broadband fibre, while at 40,000 feet.”

The Airconnect Ka antenna system is ready to use now on the current generation of GEO satellites and is planned to be certified on the Telesat Lightspeed network in the future. Currently, Global Eagle is using Telesat GEO satellites to provide high-quality connectivity to its large number of mobility customers in maritime, aviation and other markets.

Mike Pigott, Executive Vice President Connectivity, Global Eagle, added: “Achieving this critical milestone lays the foundation for the eventual certification of our Airconnect Ka solution on the Telesat Lightspeed constellation. Our airline customers will benefit from the extraordinary advantages of Telesat Lightspeed network earlier and with few upgrades required after installation. We now have the confidence to begin installations this year.”

“With Global Eagle’s Ka terminal evolution, airlines can be confident that they are future-proofing their connectivity decisions today”, stated Telesat’s Erwin Hudson, Vice President, LEO. “Telesat Lightspeed is the only enterprise-grade LEO network that can provide gate-to-gate, fibre-quality connectivity to every passenger on every flight, anywhere in the world.”