Hughes Network Systems has unveiled the company’s new partnership with Air India to provide in-flight connectivity to the airline.
The company says this will result in delivering a consistent Wi-Fi experience using a common connectivity platform across its mixed widebody fleet and that it will be leveraging Airbus HBCplus for the carrier’s A350-1000 aircraft and the RAVE Aerospace solution for Boeing 787-8 and Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. “Hughes is honoured to partner with Air India as the airline modernises connectivity across its widebody fleet,” said Reza Rasoulian, SVP and GM of the Aviation Business Unit at Hughes.
“With Hughes In-Flight Connectivity, Air India can deliver a consistent, connected onboard digital experience across both Airbus and Boeing aircraft. This common solution allows Air India to harmonize their passenger experience, operational tools, deploy digital services faster across their fleet, and has a roadmap pole-to-pole, low-latency LEO connectivity with minimal aircraft modifications.”
Dr Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Air India said: “Always-on broadband Internet connectivity is a fundamental expectation of today’s digitally savvy consumers. Our strategic vision is to provide connectivity with home-broadband like bandwidth and latency on Air India’s international and domestic flights so that connecting from our flights feels the same as connecting from home”,
“In this journey, we are pleased to partner with Hughes as their global launch customer to offer an in-flight connectivity service that takes into account the existing regulatory considerations and satellite coverage capabilities along the global flight paths of our wide body aircraft, with a roadmap to seamlessly upgrade to home-broadband levels within the next two years.”
Hughes also announced its new single antenna solution that integrates two low-power-consumption electronically steerable antennas, the Hughes HL1520 Ku-band ESA and a new Ka-band ESA.
the company says that as constellations and business models evolve, this provides airlines with a network-agnostic solution and that the solution ensures an optimised customer experience across widebody and narrowbody aircraft.
It provides network access to Hughes’ capacity partners, including Eutelsat OneWeb and Telesat. “As airlines scale with fast, free, always-on Wi-Fi across their fleets, architectures reliant on single networks will reach commercial and/or technical limits. With our innovative, flexible, advanced antenna system and the Hughes Fusion managed service, airlines can finally keep their connectivity options open as satellite networks come to market with minimal to no modifications onboard their aircraft,” said Reza Rasoulian said.
“LEO networks continue to rapidly evolve in the marketplace. With the Hughes Fusion IFC solution, we are moving beyond single-network thinking and giving airlines a seamless, agnostic connectivity architecture built to scale, enabling the optimal passenger experience by leveraging the best networks. Hughes Fusion IFC provides the resiliency, flexibility, and performance airlines need today while delivering a Wi-Fi experience that exceeds expectations flight after flight, for every passenger.”
