Brannelly: At the moment, we have voice and SMS. In the future, we will have GPRS services available on two to three aircraft in the near future. It is already fitted on one aircraft. This allows people to check emails and use their Blackberries. People talk about having the broadband experience they have at home while flying and that is a big challenge to do on an aircraft. A more narrowband form of connectivity that allows you to catch-up with news headlines, do email or light Internet browsing is the next step.

 

Brannelly: If you really want true blistering broadband anywhere in the world, it will take the new generation of Ka-band satellites to go up. It could even require the next generation after that. But, connectivity is possible today. There are more than a thousand aircraft fitted with connectivity services using the Go-Go system — a terrestrial system in the United States. The antenna points down to a network of antennas on the ground, but that does not work over the oceans. There is also a Ku-band solution that Lufthansa and Southwest have on some of its planes. But, these services can provide pretty patchy coverage when you look at the entire world, especially for a carrier like Emirates with our particular route network. What we want is a global solution where the entire planet is covered at fast speeds so passengers can do what they want on the Internet.

 

Brannelly: I think it is not a bad solution, but I am not a fan of their business model. It is an expensive solution in terms of weight and infrastructure on the aircraft. If we look to the past when Boeing did this with Connexion in the first part of the decade, they put all the technology in and had very good connections, but the company lost money and closed it down. You have the technical solution and then you have the commercial solution. I am still not 100 percent convinced that this new solution, even with the commercial economics that have been applied to it, is commercially viable. The problem is the cash you need to generate in order to sustain that business model, and the low demand you have in reality from customers for the service.

Imagine all the wide-bodied planes in the entire world; I would be surprised if there would be more than 1 million customers airborne at any time. If you think about half of them being asleep, half of them without laptops and half without anyone to call or contact, you’re down to maybe around 60,000 people who maybe want connectivity. It is a pretty small market considering the huge amount of technology and overheads to sustain.

 

Brannelly: Yes. Inmarsat is our satellite provider today and I believe we are the largest user of voice on Inmarsat in the world. Inmarsat is a global solution that was not built for the airlines, but what is good is that airlines piggyback on that technology. That technology wasn’t launched for us, but it can be used by us. The viability of the Inmarsat network is not dependent on airlines; that capacity allows commercial airlines to do what we need to do. The next generation of Ka-band satellites that Inmarsat has announced is a very similar business model. They do not need the airlines for the viability of those satellites, but it is an extra revenue stream. This means the business model is sweeter for both parties. If all the commercial airlines of the world got together and said lets launch our own network of satellites, you are probably talking about $2 billion of investment, and I don’t think all the airlines in the world would be able to come up with the cash for these satellites. We have to rely on existing infrastructure in reality.

 

Brannelly: Inmarsat have marketed that solution to the commercial airlines world quite considerably during the last six months. There is a lot of interest. It certainly looks like a sweet solution, but we will wait and see. They are in the process of building the satellites. You have issues such as all the avionics equipment on the aircraft. Having the satellite up in space is only a fraction of it. You need avionics to tune into it, an antenna that will connect, etc. The airlines can’t really drive that, apart from expressing interest, but there is huge interest from the commercial airline community in this solution, with some key benefits over Ku-band.