Swiftbroadband coverage chart. Photo: Satcom Direct

[Via Satellite 05-20-2015] Inmarsat announced flight and lab tests of High Data Rate (HDR) capabilities for SwiftBroadband have been successfully completed. The new service, developed by Inmarsat, Honeywell Aerospace and Eclipse, will double the in-flight Wi-Fi speeds for commercial, government and helicopter SwiftBroadband users through a software upgrade, according to Inmarsat.

Honeywell developed and tested HDR capabilities for Inmarsat’s L-band SwiftBroadband network over its HSD-400 and HD-710 onboard hardware. Eclipse used its Aero+ Velocity IP aggregation solution to combine four HDR channels to provide average speeds of 2.15 Mbps with peak speeds of around 2.75 Mbps, which is approximately two times faster than existing SwiftBroadband in-flight connections. SwiftBroadband HDR gives users access to the configuration so customers can choose to have higher rate communications to or from the aircraft or bi-directionally, and they purchase only the bandwidth they need.