Inmarsat celebrates 1,000th installation of next-generation inflight broadband solutions

Inmarsat, the world leader in global mobile satellite communications, today announced that more than 1,000 terminals have now been installed for its next-generation inflight broadband solutions by customers in the global airline and business aviation markets.

The milestone, celebrated at Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) in Hamburg, highlights the growing market dominance and adoption of Inmarsat’s three award-winning new connectivity services, GX Aviation, Jet ConneX and European Aviation Network (EAN).

GX Aviation and Jet ConneX are the world’s first and only global, high-speed inflight connectivity services delivered through a wholly-owned and operated network of high-throughput satellites, allowing airline and business aviation passengers to seamlessly browse the internet, stream videos, check social media and more during flights.

GX Aviation is currently available with leading airlines such as Lufthansa, Air New Zealand, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Norwegian, Avianca and Citilink. Earlier today, Inmarsat partner SITAONAIR announced that it has now activated GX Aviation on the majority of Philippine Airlines (PAL)’s new-generation aircraft.

Jet ConneX has been the most successful launch of an inflight wi-fi solution in business aviation history. It is currently flying on more than 450 aircraft across the world, offering unprecedented new capabilities and reinforcing Inmarsat’s status as the number one connectivity provider to business aviation customers globally.

EAN, developed in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, is a new purpose-built inflight broadband solution that is uniquely suited to the challenges of European airspace; one of the world’s most congested, with more than one billion passengers per year. The innovative network was founded upon a European Union initiative and has been developed by an alliance of Europe’s leading technology companies to deliver the fastest speeds for passengers, installation times for airlines and scalability to meet future demand.

Philip Balaam, President of Inmarsat Aviation, said: “GX Aviation, Jet ConneX and EAN are pioneering an exciting new chapter in global inflight connectivity and we are extremely proud that the market has responded so enthusiastically. We look forward to crossing many more milestones in the future, with a large number of installations currently underway and a healthy new business pipeline of around 3,000 aircraft. To meet future demand, we have a fully-funded development roadmap that includes new satellite launches in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

“Our success to date would not have been possible without the support of our industry-leading partnership network, which includes the likes of Collins Aerospace, Deutsche Telekom, Honeywell, SATCOM Direct, SITAONAIR, Thales and most recently Panasonic Avionics.”