Having successfully completed flight testing of its multi-orbit-capable inflight connectivity system in the Arctic region over Eutelsat OneWeb’s Ku-band Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network — and with equatorial testing now underway — Panasonic Avionics reports it is making “great progress” with the nextgen IFC program and that it’s on track with deliverables.
Moreover, the Lake Forest, California-based inflight entertainment and connectivity giant reveals it has secured undisclosed airline customers for the system, which uses Stellar Blu Solutions’ Sidewinder electronically steered antenna (ESA). Aircraft retrofits are slated to start in spring 2025.
“[T]he first install starts around April, the second one is around June and the third one is going to be late next year,” Panasonic Avionics vice president, connectivity business unit John Wade told RGN in an in-depth interview.
A distribution partner for Eutelsat OneWeb’s LEO satellite service in aero, Panasonic is unabashedly ‘leading with LEO’ in its implementation of this multi-orbit LEO/GEO offering, even though it currently operates a Ku-band GEO network comprising capacity agreements with multiple satellite operators. And it reckons this ‘LEO-first’ approach to multi-orbit LEO/GEO IFC is a key differentiator in the market.
“We really think that if you can get LEO, you should have LEO. It’s just a better service,” said Wade, noting that the latency difference “is significant and the passenger user experience is different. So, we think that’s kind of a big deal.” GEO makes sense to plug coverage gaps such as in China, noted Wade, where Panasonic has long supported GEO-focused IFC.
Eutelsat OneWeb is still ensuring that at least 30% of its network is dedicated to mobility and committing to CIRs, Wade confirmed to RGN. And as such, Panasonic feels confident that it can build consistently achievable service level agreements (SLAs) for airlines which adopt its multi-orbit IFC solution.
Arctic coverage
For months, Panasonic flight tested the Sidewinder-based system aboard a Cessna Citation in the continental United States — including putting the Citation into 60-degree bank turns — to ensure its engineers understood the performance of the network.
“We are seeing speeds pretty much close to 200 Mbps forward link and 30 Mbps on reverse,” said Wade.
Then it took the Citation further afield. Flying recently out of Fairbanks, Alaska, said Wade, Panasonic’s team went “as far as 82 degrees north so pretty much all the way up” to test LEO’s coverage in polar regions where GEO satellite coverage does not have reach.
A speed test over Eutelsat OneWeb LEO, as taken aboard the Citation whilst flying in the Arctic
During this flight test, web browsing over Eutelsat OneWeb LEO was “highly responsive” with sub-2-second load times; video streaming was able to seamlessly support 4K YouTube playback with minimal buffering; and file sharing was “effortless” with engineers able to send large image attachments (up to 10 MB), according to the firm, which shared a video of its activities on LinkedIn.
Explained Wade to RGN:
One of the reasons we wanted to test that [in the Arctic] was that the way the OneWeb satellites fly, they are sort of going over the poles and they get more and more dense as they get to the poles and they actually have to turn various beams off; otherwise they interfere with each other. So, we actually wanted to make sure that all that was working and it’s working fine.
We saw the same sort of throughput up in the polar regions as we did over the US, not that you would expect anything different really.
And starting this week, we’re also doing a bunch of equatorial testing as well so we’re testing all the extremes of the system in terms of how it’s performing and so far we’re really happy with it. It’s delivering everything that they [Stellar Blu] said it would. We have got no doubt that it’s going to work really well.
Eutelsat OneWeb continues to build out its ground infrastructure but there are a few areas that won’t be completed until spring 2025. For Panasonic, this timeline for global coverage is fine, said Wade.
“We’d expected that sort of timeline. We haven’t announced any of our customer programs yet, and we will at some point.” But given that the first aircraft retrofit doesn’t start until around April, “we’re not going to be impacted by the timing in terms of the rollout.”
In terms of when the kit will be factory-fit to aircraft by airframers, Stellar Blu is presently going through the process of obtaining Boeing linefit offerability for Sidewinder, whilst Panasonic and indeed Intelsat are on separate tracks to be linefit managed service providers using that linefit hardware. Intelsat announced in May that Japan Airlines has selected its multi-orbit IFC linefit on Boeing 737 MAX twinjets.
The linefit process for Panasonic, said Wade, is “tracking to plan, everything is ongoing, and I think we’re anticipating late 2026/early 2027 for the availability of the first linefit programs.” Panasonic is presently finalizing details with Boeing at the moment, including around which airframe models will be prioritized. “So far at least everything is tracking well.”
Wi-Fi roaming
Even as its multi-orbit IFC work continues apace, Panasonic has added capacity to its GEO network for its GEO-specific IFC customers, which use the company’s traditional gimbaled antenna. And it continues to innovate as well. To wit, Wi-Fi roaming is coming to an unnamed Asian carrier next year using the Panasonic GEO network, Wade revealed.
“[W]e’re looking to leverage what we’ve done with [subsidiary] AeroMobile in that we have 400 MNOs [mobile network operators] around the world that we have relationships with and it’s really straightforward for us to, in conjunction with those MNOs, bundle Wi-Fi service with your cellular plan,” Wade explained.
“It’s all Wi-Fi, so the picocells of the past would go away, but the passenger experience of just getting on the aircraft and having it connect back to your home provider remains.”
This plan is very much in sync with the work of Seamless Air Alliance, of which Panasonic is a member. “We are launching this early next year with an Asian airline; we haven’t publicly stated which carrier it is but there’s a number of MNOs that are very interested in bundling Wi-Fi,” said the Panasonic executive. It helps to answer questions about the commercialization of onboard Wi-Fi, beyond the advertising/sponsorship-supported free Wi-Fi model, he noted.
T-Mobile has of course done something similar in the US — provide free Internet browsing for eligible cellular customers — but, said Wade, “it’s not quite as seamless as we can make it because you need to insert your phone number and stuff like that. But once we get to the MNO authentication, it will happen totally seamlessly.”
This is another area where Panasonic sees itself as differentiating when its multi-orbit LEO/GEO IFC offering debuts, “by really giving airlines options as to who pays” for the Wi-Fi, noted Wade.
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Featured image credited to Panasonic Avionics
