Winning the race
“It never gets easier, you just go faster,” Greg LeMond famously said. Although he was obviously referring to cycling, one can easily equate the relentless toil of a pro cyclist, to the Sisyphean efforts connectivity providers endure to satisfy demand.
The world of aviation connectivity requires constant innovation, reinvention and new thinking, just to keep the pedals turning and stay ahead of the pack.
What’s new from Inmarsat?
Inmarsat understands this only too well. The market-leading global mobile satellite communications company, it is now upping the pace to pull away from the peloton, with its recent announcement of a new generation of game-changing satellites.
The deal signed with Airbus last month, will see the development of the next phase of Inmarsat’s Global Xpress (GX) network. The GX satellite network that powers its award-winning GX Aviation and Jet ConneX inflight connectivity services for airlines and the business aviation market globally.
The three new satellites, GX7, 8 and 9 are scheduled to launch from 2023 and form part of a long-term plan to develop the most agile, flexible, scalable and cost-effective constellation in the world.
These ultra-high power capacity additions to the GX satellite network have been designed to give customers the confidence to invest because they are state-of-the-art services that will meet the growing demands of the future.
They will do this through thousands of dynamically formed beams that will direct capacity with laser-like precision. This in turn will allow real-time mobility because capacity can be immediately relocated in line with real-time flight patterns, new routes and seasonal demand surges across the globe.
Hot on the heels of this announcement, was news that the business has made another significant investment in the future development of its GX network with two new payloads, GX10A and 10B. The deal with Space Norway and its subsidiary, Space Norway HEOSAT will provide even more capacity for aircraft flying in higher elevations and across the Arctic.
To continue the cycling analogy, this is like adding more and more gears to your bike whilst the competitors are on single speed, or haven’t even entered the race, yet are making promises about results for tomorrow.
The magnitude of the decisions made
These decisions about such large-scale investment haven’t been taken lightly by Inmarsat. To put these investments in perspective, this could be likened to refinancing your house to buy a huge cutting-edge home sound system, worth a sizeable percentage of your house’s value.
Imagine you then strapped that cutting-edge sound system to the world’s largest firework and operated it remotely, hoping for perfect sound in each room. Then you repeated this five times in a row.
So why make these investments?
Simple, Inmarsat have to keep making these hard decisions to ensure that choosing JetConneX is an easy decision. Inmarsat has to be the answer to the question the resellers, OEMs and flight departments ask: ‘Who is going to provide me with best-in-class satellite connectivity?”
And the great thing is, Inmarsat knows that this dynamic will never stop, that the pace of change will always be relentless, and that it will never get easier – Inmarsat will just keep going faster.