Clamoring for a connection

Many of today's constantly connected consumers balk at spending a few hours without Web access. Commercials airlines are responding by forging links with satellite providers that give flyers the same capabilities they have on the ground. Increasing bandwidth is one of the focal points for inflight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) systems.

“High throughput satellites (HTS) are going to be launched in early 2016, which will make exponentially more capacity available,” said Panasonic Avionics Corp. spokesman Brian Bardwell. “Layering these HTS spot beams over our existing wide-beam network ensures both global coverage and the greatest throughput. Our wide-beam network today covers 99.6% of all commercial flight hours, offering up to 50 Mbps. HTS capacity that will bring 200 Mbps, as well as extremely high throughput capacity, that will bring up to 3.3 Gbps in certain regions.”