OneWeb In-Flight LEO Broadband Test Hits 260Mbps on Boeing B777

British-registered OneWeb, which is partly owned by the UK gov and building a global constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast low-latency broadband satellites, has worked with commercial aviation terminal partner Stellar Blu Solutions to successfully test in-flight connectivity aboard a Boeing B777-200LR plane.

The company has already launched 428 of their small c.150kg Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast (100Mbps+) and low-latency (sub-100ms) broadband satellites into space – orbiting at an altitude of around 1,200km – and their initial plan is to build a constellation of 648 (588 are needed for coverage – the rest are for redundancy), which is enough for a reasonable level of global coverage.

Sadly, the rollout of this constellation has faced delays due to Russia’s war with Ukraine, but they expect to resume launches later this year (here) and, in the meantime, their development in other areas has continued unabated. One example of this has been their work to develop a solution to help speed up the performance of in-flight WiFi on aircraft (here and here), which is often supplied via capacity from satellites.

The latest example of this occurred last month (27th May 2022), which is only now being made public. In short, OneWeb and Stellar Blu – partnered with antenna technology provider Ball Aerospace to incorporate its electronically steered arrays (ESA) – conducted a successful test of their in-flight “Sidewinder” platform aboard a Boeing B777-200LR that took off from Fort Worth Alliance Airport (KAFW), in Texas.

The Test Flight Crew simultaneously demonstrated the ability to connect Microsoft Teams calls, conduct 4K YouTube streaming, Netflix, online VR gaming and Nintendo Switch gaming, among other structured performance tests. Maximum speeds of 260Mbps download / 80Mbps upload were achieved (such speeds would normally be shared between many users), all while operating at “well under” 100ms (milliseconds) of latency.

By comparison, a lot of existing in-flight satellite solutions tend to supply capacity of 50-100Mbps to the aircraft, while latency times can be in the highly variable 600-4000ms territory (see our own test on a BA flight). But that’s on a good system, some older platforms are much worse.

Ben Griffin, VP of Mobility, said:

“This test flight represents a fantastic milestone for OneWeb. Broadband in-flight connectivity, delivered to a commercial aircraft via low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and an electrically steered antenna (ESA) is now – finally – a reality. Together with our partners Stellar Blu and technology from Ball Aerospace, we are now well and truly on our way to delivering consistently reliable, game-changing, affordable inflight connectivity to commercial aviation users everywhere.

This successful flight test demonstrates the power, not only of the OneWeb network, but our industry focused and partnership-led approach to the design, development, and deployment of ground-breaking technologies to connect commercial aviation. A solution designed for the aviation industry, by the aviation industry.”

The test flight was the first of several that will occur through the rest of 2022. The flight validates not only the installation and integration of the aircraft terminal, but underscores the performance of the antenna technology, and verified the reliability of the connectivity during taxi, take-off, landing and typical aircraft flight manoeuvres.

Assuming all continues to go well, then OneWeb will be aiming to achieve certification and availability in mid-2023. This would be in keeping with their previously stated goal of launching their first services for business aviation in 2024 (e.g. they’ve already signed contracts with a number of related firms, such as Gogo).

However, such services are often only introduced to existing aircraft during major refit programmes, which are usually preceded by lots of product testing. Put another way, it’ll probably be a fair while before you’re using OneWeb’s service on a flight, unless you’re lucky.

At this point it’s worth remembering that OneWeb’s big rival in the LEO space (no pun intended) – Starlink (SpaceX) – are already in the process of signing deals with a number of airlines. Starlink also have an advantage in terms of their scale and maturity of deployment.