Australia’s telecom company Telstra is conducting trials to offer 4G inflight Wi-Fi access on test flights between Melbourne and Sydney.
The Skinet technology uses four specially built mobile sites that cover most of the commercial air route between the two cities.
Designed to enable travelers access the network as the jet moves at high-speed, these sites feature upward facing antennas that will connect with the antennas that are attached on underside of an aircraft.
In order to run the trials, the company borrowed some spectrum and used several test flights with a number of different aircraft fitted out with special terminals to pick up the signals.
It has successfully established and maintained data connections, with a maximum data throughput of 15Mbps and an average throughput of nearly 10Mbps.
According to Telstra executive director Mike Wright, these test flights are encouraging and are a significant step in the development of a potential Skinet network that might one day deliver high-speed broadband connectivity to a range of aircraft-based applications that could extend from commuter use to a range of remote monitoring and control applications.
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By GlobalDataTelstra is planning to carry out additional trials later in 2014, while it evaluates the possible economics around building a nationwide, commercial long-term evolution (LTE) network in the sky.
