{"id":15444,"date":"2018-02-07T10:47:56","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T10:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=15444"},"modified":"2018-02-07T10:55:46","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T10:55:46","slug":"uk-satellite-operator-inmarsat-says-european-aviation-network-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/02\/uk-satellite-operator-inmarsat-says-european-aviation-network-go.html","title":{"rendered":"UK Satellite Operator Inmarsat Says European Aviation Network is GO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The prospect of superfast in-flight broadband, across the UK and EU, took a big step forward this week after Inmarsat confirmed that they had completed their new European Aviation Network (EAN), which mixes a new multi-beam S-band Satellite<\/a> with 300 ground-based 4G<\/a> (LTE) stations.<\/p>\n

At present most existing in-flight systems, which tend to be distributed through the cabin via WiFi<\/a> and supplied by a Satellite<\/a> link, tend to be painfully slow and unreliable (in my experience it’s often worse than the old days of dialup<\/a> modems). By comparison the new network should be able to offer internet data speeds of over 75Mbps<\/strong> (Megabits per second) to the aircraft and relatively fast latency times of around 100ms<\/strong> (milliseconds).<\/p>\n

Admittedly 75Mbps is capacity that still has to be shared with up to several hundred passengers but that’s a significant leap forward from the current systems, which would often struggle to deliver around 1-2Mbps to a single aircraft (latency times could also be painful).<\/p>\n