A handful of companies have banded together with the goal of bringing real broadband to airplane passengers.
The founding members of the Seamless Air Alliance include Sprint, Delta, Airbus, OneWeb, and Airtel. The idea is to let carriers “extend their services into airline cabins” so passengers have immediate access to high-speed internet while in the air. Mobile network operators would be able to reach airline passengers through the Seamless Air Alliance’s satellites, which the group claims deliver the “same high speed, low latency connectivity from ground, to air and back again” as traditional cellular networks.
“Easy-to-use, high-speed connectivity is part of the next revolution in aerospace,” says Marc Fontaine, Airbus Digital Transformation Officer. “We’re excited to create this seamless experience for our airline customers and their passengers. As we showed with our Skywise aviation data platform, Airbus is committed to innovation that creates value across the aviation industry.”
One of the goals is to improve the on-boarding process. Today’s in-flight WiFi service often requires painful connection steps that include entering credit card information. The Seamless Air Alliance believes in can “eliminate the immense costs and hurdles commonly associated with acquisition, installation, and operation of data access infrastructure” on airplanes with an open specification for interoperability. ”
With our 5G network rolling out next year we’re investing heavily to make sure our customers have the best mobile internet experience possible,” said Dow Draper, CCO at Sprint. “As an initial member of the Seamless Alliance, we’re looking forward to enabling customers to experience Sprint’s high-speed connectivity in the air, hassle-free.”
The founding members are inviting others to join the initiative.
