08.18.11
Posted in Financials, Globalstar, Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum, TerreStar at 8:49 pm by timfarrar
In my last post I estimated that to in order to relocate and preserve precision GPS service for farmers and surveyors there might need to be a “delay of several years” before LightSquared was able to bring its lower 2x10MHz of spectrum into use in a terrestrial network. Indeed, according to one GPS industry commentator, a transition period of 12 years might be more appropriate to “allow a smooth transition with a manageable financial impact to the high-precision GPS user community.”
However, because of LightSquared’s prior assurances that it wanted to cooperate with the GPS industry to preserve existing services, no-one seems to have noticed that in fact the company does have a potential “nuclear option”, namely that because these services are provided on a commercial basis to Starfire and OmniSTAR, LightSquared and Inmarsat could simply decide to cease supporting these services in accordance with their capacity lease contracts. Given that LightSquared is now blaming the GPS industry for the interference problems and accusing GPS manufacturers of being unwilling to cooperate with its attempts to find a solution, it seems increasingly plausible that LightSquared could now say that it simply can’t continue to support these services unless the FCC mandates a rapid transition of precision GPS users to new equipment equipped with filters.
LightSquared (which provides capacity to OmniSTAR, now owned by Trimble) has previously indicated that it only plans to support its legacy services in “emulation mode” for a limited period of time, and it appears likely that the contract with OmniSTAR could therefore potentially be terminated at relatively short notice. While Inmarsat’s contract with Starfire may not operate under quite such a short time horizons, many of Inmarsat’s leases are renewable on an annual basis and so could possibly be terminated if desired. In reaching such a decision, Inmarsat would have to decide whether it prefers the ~$1M or so it receives each year from Starfire to the $115M it is being paid each year by LightSquared (indeed it is conceivable that this issue may have been addressed in the deal under which Inmarsat was paid an additional $40M by LightSquared earlier this year).
Some might argue that the FCC would surely step in to prevent such damage to precision GPS services. However, in March 2010 when it granted LightSquared the requested modifications to its ATC license, the FCC explicitly stated that it would refrain “from interfering unnecessarily with licensees’ business negotiations” even though “this may present challenges to earth station operators using the satellites involved, and may require modification of operations, deployment of new equipment, or other adjustments” because “it would not serve the public interest for the Commission to assume the role of an arbiter of disputes between a satellite operator and its customers.” Nevertheless, the FCC did leave itself one potential escape route, stating that it would not step into such disputes “in the absence of a prior determination that the satellite operator provides essential service and is unconstrained by actual or potential competition from providers of substitutable services.”
Of course, if the FCC did step in and force LightSquared to continue providing precision GPS services, then that might provide grounds for LightSquared to sue for compensation, especially if that was determined to be the main roadblock to offering commercial service in its lower L-band spectrum. As I’ve noted before, ending up in court certainly seems to be an increasingly plausible outcome to what the Economist describes as this “sorry tale of greed, haste and incompetence.”
As an aside, LightSquared does not seem to be the only MSS operator whose ATC services face interference challenges. A recent comment on one of my older blog posts highlighted that Open Range has been getting into difficulties with its use of Globalstar’s S-band spectrum in Indiana. Additionally, if LightSquared’s use of ATC handsets at 1627-1637MHz is a major concern for GPS users in the 1559-1610MHz band, then one would have to expect even greater concern about any future ATC deployment within Globalstar’s L-band spectrum at 1610-1617.775MHz (note that Open Range only uses Globalstar’s S-band spectrum in a TDD architecture). Similarly, there are now a number of comments in the 2GHz proceeding about the potential interference challenges at the bottom end of the TerreStar uplink spectrum (2000MHz).
Permalink
06.21.11
Posted in Financials, Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 9:01 am by timfarrar
Yesterday’s announcement that LightSquared plans to use the lower 2x10MHz block of its L-band spectrum (1526-1536MHz downlink, paired with 1627.5-1637.5MHz uplink) for initial operations, leaves a number of questions unanswered. In particular, the most critical issue is when Inmarsat will make this block of spectrum available. Half of the spectrum (1526-1531MHz downlink) was part of the Phase 1A plan, which was part of the rebanding plan that LightSquared was paying Inmarsat $250M to undertake, and completion was scheduled for February 2012, though Inmarsat also potentially could have extended this date by 9 months in the event of an “excusable delay”. The other half of the block (1531-36MHz downlink) was part of the Phase 2 spectrum leased by Inmarsat to LightSquared for $115M per year, which was scheduled to be available in July 2013.
Inmarsat has indicated that under the amendment to the Cooperation Agreement signed on April 25, for which LightSquared paid an additional $40M, it will work to make this lower block of Phase 2 spectrum available somewhat earlier than July 2013. It is also possible (although unconfirmed) that Inmarsat may reduce the amount of potential excusable delay in making the Phase 1A spectrum available.
LightSquared has indicated that it plans to “be able to test its service in early 2012 and launch commercial services around mid 2012″. This would presumably imply testing in the Phase 1A 2x5MHz block and launching commercial service in the 2x10MHz block, i.e. Inmarsat would have no excusable delay in making the Phase 1A spectrum available and would advance the Phase 2 lower block spectrum availability by roughly one year. However, the lack of clarity around definitive dates tends to suggest that Inmarsat will be making “best efforts” to move up the Phase 2 spectrum availability but has not made any definitive commitment that it will be able to do so.
This would not be surprising, because Inmarsat has to accommodate its maritime and aeronautical customers who rely on its satellite network for distress and safety services (GMDSS) by fitting filters to these devices. I understand that Inmarsat-C GMDSS terminals use a block of spectrum around 1537-38MHz for their safety-critical communications (basically broadcasting distress messages and other alerts from the Inmarsat satellite to ships in the surrounding area), and I was told that some of Inmarsat’s terminals using this spectrum may not be frequency agile. Even if they are (per the comment below), then after the Phase 2 migration Inmarsat will concentrate its satellite operations within the 1536-45MHz range and so the 1531-36MHz downlink block has the highest potential for interference with these safety services.
Inmarsat also plans to close its Aero H and I services, which are apparently not compatible with LightSquared’s operations, and transition these customers to SwiftBroadband safety services (which will be better protected from interference). However, the SBB safety services are only expected to start flight trials in early 2013, which would then lead to safety certification during 2014. Whether this timetable is compatible with making the Phase 2 spectrum available at an earlier date is also unclear. Notably I understand that there may be as many as 1000 US government aircraft that rely on Aero H in North America, and so there may be considerable pushback if these users are forced to transition without either compensation or an approved alternative aeronautical safety service.
With respect to Inmarsat’s land services, there is no intention to protect these services (which include the John Deere Starfire GPS augmentation broadcasts that use the Inmarsat satellites). In fact I’m told that Inmarsat is specifically prohibited by the terms of its agreement with LightSquared from fitting filters to its land terminals to allow them to operate in the presence of LightSquared interference. The reason for this is that the uplinks from Inmarsat’s relatively high powered satellite terminals (such as BGAN or ISatPhone Pro) could produce significant interference to the sensitive LightSquared receivers on its terrestrial towers if they were to operate within range of a LightSquared base station. However, without an input filter these terminals will be overloaded by the terrestrial LightSquared signal and will shut down, thus preventing them from transmitting and causing interference to LightSquared.
Permalink
06.07.11
Posted in Handheld, Inmarsat, Iridium, Operators, Services at 1:50 pm by timfarrar
Last July, I suggested that although the performance of ISatPhone Pro was better than I had expected, the pricing strategy adopted by Inmarsat seemed to be mistaken and their expectations of rapid churn from Iridium were wide of the mark. Some criticized this opinion as biased, suggesting that the ISatPhone Pro would actually be “a huge hit“. Based on conversations with distributors last fall, I encountered a quite diverse set of views, with some expecting the low price of the ISatPhone Pro to open up significant new markets, and others concerned that they would not be able to make up for the lower revenues through increased volumes and (what were supposed to be) better margins.
Now that the first results are in from Q1 of this year, it appears that Inmarsat sold only 6K-7K handsets (total revenues of $3M including accessories), while Iridium sold well over twice that quantity (15K+), with handset unit sales up 39% on the previous year. These results come as quite a shock, because even though I was relatively skeptical about the potential of the ISatPhone Pro to open up new markets, I still found it hard to envisage a scenario where Iridium sold more handsets than Inmarsat this year. However, unless things turn around dramatically in the second quarter of the year (which is the key sales window for handheld MSS phones), that will very likely be the outcome for 2011 as a whole. (Note that Inmarsat did have slightly more net adds than Iridium in the quarter, ~7K as opposed to 4K-5K for Iridium, but that reflects the fact that Iridium has well over 200K commercial handheld subscribers, some of whom will inevitably terminate service each month).
Distributors now seem far more downbeat about the prospects for the ISatPhone Pro than they were even late last year, presumably because so far it doesn’t look like substantial untapped markets have emerged, and customer response to the phone itself (as opposed to the price) has not been that positive. In addition, the ARPUs being generated by those ISatPhone Pros that have been sold appear to be rather low, because Iridium seems to have been quite successful in targeting multi-unit sales and retaining its high value customers, while leaving the low end individual market largely to Inmarsat, by not reducing the headline price of the handset too much.
Will Inmarsat therefore fall short of its target of reaching 10% of the MSS handheld market after 2 years? In terms of active handsets the target remains achievable (if now somewhat more challenging), because Inmarsat needs to gain around 70K-80K handheld subscribers by the end of 2012 (compared to around 15K ISatPhone Pro users at the moment). However, it seems all but impossible for Inmarsat to generate the $30M in annual wholesale service revenues it would need to gain a 10% share of handheld MSS revenues. Indeed, unless Inmarsat does gain much greater traction amongst high end users, it is plausible that its annual wholesale service revenues from the ISatPhone Pro may be as low as $10M (and in any case are unlikely to be more than $15M) in 2012.
Permalink
05.10.11
Posted in Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 3:04 pm by timfarrar
As testing continues into whether LightSquared will interfere with GPS signals, Qualcomm has filed the results of its own initial cellphone testing with the FCC. Of course, LightSquared is depending on Qualcomm as its principal supplier of chipsets and developer of the GMSA/S-EVDO air interface for its satellite services, so it might have been expected that Qualcomm would confirm the position asserted by LightSquared supporters, that cellphones won’t need to use filters to prevent interference with their A-GPS location chips. However, in fact Qualcomm has come to the initial conclusion that “additional rejection of 30dB may be required” and that the current filters used in its A-GPS chipsets may need to be upgraded, in view of how close the upper part of the LightSquared downlink band (the Phase 0 spectrum at 1550-1555MHz) is to the GPS band. Given that most people agree that the interference problem will likely be much worse for other types of GPS receivers, this is not an encouraging result for LightSquared.
LightSquared may therefore be unable to use the Phase 0 spectrum unless receiver standards are imposed on GPS receivers, as the FCC suggested in its recent 2GHz ruling, which indicated that “incumbent users…must use receivers that reasonably discriminate against reception of signals outside their allocated spectrum”. However, Inmarsat indicated yesterday that on April 25, it signed an amendment to its Cooperation Agreement with LightSquared, and received an additional payment of $40M to accelerate the clearing of the Phase 1A spectrum (i.e. to free up the additional 2x5MHz block at the bottom of the L-band, which under the original agreement would have been made available sometime between February and November 2012). Thus it appears that even LightSquared may be acknowledging that the top part of its frequency band will be largely unusable for the foreseeable future, unless and until receiver standards are imposed on the GPS community, requiring a multi-year program of equipment upgrades and recertification, with all of the additional costs and delays that would imply.
Permalink
03.03.11
Posted in Financials, Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 3:52 pm by timfarrar
It now appears that Harbinger is focusing its energies on the 2GHz MSS band, with the potential assistance of MetroPCS in its $2.6B bid for DBSD and TerreStar. It is therefore interesting to note that LightSquared has a largely unrecognized way to get out of its spectrum agreement with Inmarsat if the uncertainty created by GPS interference makes it impossible to fund that deployment. According to the Cooperation Agreement filed with the SEC in December 2007, either party could terminate the Agreement if a “regulatory change” makes it impossible to renegotiate in a way that maintains “the benefit of the bargain”.
Section 7.3 Regulatory Change. Without limiting any specific provision herein to the contrary, if any court or federal, state or local government authority or international body with jurisdiction orders or takes any action which becomes effective and which requires the termination or material modification of this Agreement to comply with such action or otherwise with Applicable Law (a “Permissibility Determination???), the Parties shall use their respective best efforts to renegotiate this Agreement in good faith and recast this Agreement in terms that are likely to cure the defects caused by the Permissibility Determination while maintaining the benefit of the bargain to the Parties hereunder and to return a balance of benefits to the Parties comparable to the balance of benefits provided by the Agreement in its current terms and otherwise in a manner consistent with this Agreement. If the Parties are unable to recast this Agreement in a manner that cures such defects and otherwise is mutually agreeable to the Parties, this Agreement will terminate, subject to Section 7.4, effective on such date as the Parties’ activities are required to terminate pursuant to the Permissibility Determination.
Section 7.4 Force Majeure. If any Party is affected by Force Majeure it shall immediately notify the other Parties of the nature and extent of the Force Majeure event. No Party shall be deemed to be in breach of this Agreement, or otherwise be liable to another Party, by reason of any delay in performance, or non-performance, of any of its obligations under this Agreement to the extent that such delay or non-performance is due to any Force Majeure of which it has notified the other Parties and the time for performance of that obligation shall be extended accordingly. Each Party shall use its reasonable efforts to minimize the effects of or shorten the duration of any Force Majeure event and resume the performance of its obligations under this Agreement as soon as possible. If the Force Majeure in question prevails for a continuous period in excess of one hundred eighty (180) days and prevents any Party from carrying out any of its material obligations hereunder (which for the avoidance of doubt shall without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing include any obligation to pay money in excess of $1,000,000, any obligation to issue stock and any obligation to implement any Spectrum Plan), the Parties shall enter into bona fide discussions with a view to mitigating its effects, or to agreeing upon such alternative arrangements as may be fair and reasonable and failing agreement on the same within a further 90 days, any Party may unilaterally and in its absolute discretion terminate this Agreement with immediate effect by notice in writing to the other Parties.
Although Harbinger has invested a great deal in LightSquared to date, it is facing a major battle over GPS interference issues in the L-band. Indeed LightSquared now apparently “concedes there may be some interference to GPS signals which…may require modification to some existing GPS units”. If these problems cause a significant delay in its ability to roll out a terrestrial network in the L-band, it looks like LightSquared would have strong grounds to at least suspend its agreement and payments to Inmarsat, while it focused on rolling out an alternative terrestrial network in the 2GHz spectrum. Of course that would presumably require a waiver from the FCC to allow terrestrial-only devices, similar to the waiver LightSquared was granted in the L-band just a few weeks ago, but at this stage it wouldn’t be a surprise if the FCC came up with such a deal “to save GPS”.
Permalink
02.11.11
Posted in Financials, Inmarsat, LightSquared, Operators, Regulatory, Spectrum at 1:57 pm by timfarrar
“Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,
Or a plane to go or the mail to come,
Or the rain to go or the phone to ring,
Or the snow to snow
Or waiting around for a Yes or No
Or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.”
(Dr Seuss, Oh! The Places You’ll Go)
This week we’ve seen news that Clearwire is apparently abandoning its retail strategy, “opening the door for additional investment in the struggling company by Sprint Nextel Corp.” Clearwire is also now suggesting that it “has enough funds to continue operating through the end of the year”, reducing the drumbeat of articles that have recently suggested a deal with T-Mobile would come before the end of the first quarter.
We’ve also seen Harbinger selling its remaining 14% stake in Inmarsat, which also suggests that no partner announcement is imminent from LightSquared, otherwise the sale would presumably have been delayed until after that announcement. This is because Inmarsat’s share price would have been boosted by the confidence in LightSquared’s future that such an announcement would create, and so Harbinger could then have got a better price for its shares. (By way of comparison, LightSquared announced additional funding immediately before selling the first half of its Inmarsat shareholding back in October).
All this points to T-Mobile maintaining the stance, set out in its investor day presentation last month, that it does not have a pressing need to acquire more spectrum, and by implication can wait until later this year before making a decision. In that context, Clearwire and Harbinger’s actions could be interpreted as seeking to demonstrate that they will have sufficient funding to wait for T-Mobile’s decision.
Yesterday the President also indicated that he will press for more spectrum to be auctioned, which may well include the release of the 1755-1780MHz government spectrum that could be paired with the AWS-3 block, and would likely be one favored option for T-Mobile. By waiting until later this year, T-Mobile could also see if there is an opportunity to make use of the 2GHz MSS spectrum, and with the cable companies apparently not seeing much success from their wireless offerings, SpectrumCo might also be more open to a sale of its 20MHz of AWS-1 spectrum.
In the meantime, we’re seeing more attempts to discredit LightSquared, apparently designed to prompt further enquiries by Republicans in Congress. This is likely to turn more attention towards the interference issues created by the LightSquared network, and though Inmarsat has maintained that it “is confident that the effects on [Inmarsat] customers will be minimal”, I understand that view is not shared universally within the MSS community or apparently within the Department of Defense.
I wonder how the FCC feels at this point in time, as it waits for LightSquared to announce how it plans to move forward, assuming that (like me and the “two industry officials” cited in a February 7 Space News article) it expected the announcement of partners to come almost immediately after the waiver was granted. The FCC’s language already appears to have shifted slightly, from stating that “LightSquared would be a new competitor and entrant into mobile broadband with new sources of capital…” when it granted the waiver in late January, to indicating this week that LightSquared “deserves every opportunity to succeed”. Let’s hope for the FCC’s sake that it does, and soon, before there is any problem meeting the “Unique Terrestrial Buildout Obligations” cited by the FCC to justify grant of LightSquared’s waiver.
Permalink
11.30.10
Posted in Financials, Handheld, Inmarsat, Operators, Spectrum, TerreStar at 5:51 pm by timfarrar
TerreStar has finally filed the exhibits to its Disclosure Statement which set out more details about its Genus business plan and the valuation of its spectrum, and though I don’t think Blackstone are paying tribute to Leslie Nielsen when they respond “I am serious” (and don’t call me Shirley), their Genus business plan has caused much mirth in the MSS industry.
I’ve previously pointed out the similarities to the launch of Iridium (and ironically Blackstone were also the financial advisers to Motorola in their attempts to restructure Iridium after it filed for bankruptcy in 1999). Just as back then, it seems hard to understand how TerreStar can hope to capture 41K subscribers with an average wholesale ARPU of $50 by the end of 2011, let alone 156K subscribers with an average wholesale ARPU of $42 by the end of 2014 (almost equal to the size of the entire North American handheld MSS market today), given the reception that the Genus phone has received so far in the market, and the recent laughable attempt to sell the phone to consumers.
However, it is interesting that TerreStar has now initiated a formal sale process for its assets in an attempt to gauge their market value. This has also generated some amusing responses, but of more interest is whether this means TerreStar has reached a deal with Harbinger to avoid a fight over the “unsecured creditors’ entitlement to excess value of TerreStar-2 (after repayment of the Purchase Money Credit Agreement)” which is acknowledged in the Liquidation Analysis to be an issue of contention (and is presumable one reason why Harbinger has been buying up TerreStar Networks’ 6.5% Exchangeable Notes). Certainly, this process would be an obvious way to find out whether one or other of the European S-band licensees (Inmarsat and Solaris) really is interested in buying the TerreStar-2 ground spare, in order to meet their license obligations to the European Commission, and to see whether the $200M valuation placed on this satellite by an appraisal back in August can actually be realized in practice.
Permalink
11.05.10
Posted in Inmarsat, Operators at 4:01 pm by timfarrar
In October 2009, Inmarsat announced that Andy Sukawaty would stay as Chairman and CEO until September 30, 2011, and then move into the role of Chairman until at least September 30, 2012. Typically, Inmarsat has announced personnel changes at the top of the company as much as a year in advance, such as when Michael Butler stepped down from his role as President of the company in April 2009. Inmarsat has also just undertaken various changes of responsibility related to establishing its new Global Xpress business, which will be based in Switzerland. As a result, it appears logical that Inmarsat may announce in the near future who is expected to take over as CEO next year, perhaps even as soon as Inmarsat’s Q3 results call on Monday.
If this happens, it will be very interesting to see if Inmarsat goes outside the company or promotes an internal candidate. Several people in the MSS industry have suggested that Jim Parm, the CEO of Stratos, could be a potential internal candidate, although this might raise concerns amongst other distributors about whether Stratos will be managed at arms length in the longer term. However, earlier this year, Andy Sukawaty indicated in an interview that Inmarsat was “seeking talent” in “senior general management roles”, noting that the recession had made “even C-suite executives available”. There are few obvious external candidates for the Inmarsat CEO position in either the MSS or FSS industry, but more possibilities in the US defense sector or perhaps even the wider telecoms sector. It certainly seems plausible that a defense executive could potentially be a good match for Inmarsat, given that Global Xpress will further reinforce Inmarsat’s dependence on the US DoD as its leading customer.
Permalink
Posted in Broadband, Inmarsat, Operators, VSAT at 3:24 pm by timfarrar
On its results call last night, Viasat said that it is soliciting preliminary technical proposals from manufacturers for a ViaSat-2 Ka-band satellite to complement the ViaSat-1 spacecraft set for launch in the first half of 2011. Viasat is also aiming to sell around 10% of its Viasat-1 capacity to government users and another 10% of the capacity for mobile applications. With the possibility that the Viasat-2 satellite could add beams to target areas such as the North Atlantic ocean and/or various oilfields, it now seems plausible that Viasat will seek to challenge Inmarsat’s Global Xpress project directly, in several of its Inmarsat’s planned target markets (government, energy and maritime).
This would not be particularly surprising, because it is our understanding that (despite significant efforts earlier in the year) Viasat is not on the list of bidders for the Global Xpress ground infrastructure contract, which Inmarsat is expected to award early next year (and for which bids were received in mid-October). Inmarsat has a major advantage in that Global Xpress will provide coverage around the world, including hotspots for UAV demand such as Afghanistan. However, Viasat has dramatically more capacity on its satellite and so it could potentially cherry pick some high revenue opportunities in North America and the surrounding areas.
On balance I think Inmarsat is better placed to win this battle, because we have projected for many years that the satellite consumer broadband market would not live up to Viasat’s very high expectations. Indeed I still expect that the most that Viasat and Hughes can hope for in the North American consumer broadband market is 2-3 million customers between them, with growth stalling in 3-4 years time as terrestrial buildout continues. Fundamentally, I have a hard time seeing satellite broadband as anything other than a last resort technology, however much capacity Viasat throws at the customer, because the constraining factor is the need to install a relatively costly terminal, which then requires ARPUs of $50 per month and up, far above expectations for terrestrial alternatives (especially in less wealthy rural areas).
As a result, Viasat could well be left with excess capacity if it does decide to contract for Viasat-2 before Viasat-1 has proved its commercial potential, as was stated on the call. Of course that could lead to some destructive price cutting to capture the limited number of regional customer opportunities, but just as in the MSS market when regional players have made inroads in certain areas, Inmarsat could well emerge relatively unscathed.
Permalink
09.23.10
Posted in Aeronautical, Inmarsat, Operators at 11:59 am by timfarrar
Its now been announced that JetBlue has signed an MOU with Viasat to install Ka-band connectivity on its fleet, starting in 2012. One of the primary reasons cited by JetBlue was that the satellite capacity was much cheaper than at Ku-band.
We analyzed the cost of providing service for Aircell and Row44 in one of our recent research reports, and concluded that (as JetBlue also asserted), Ku-band satellite capacity can rapidly become the dominant cost driver for aeronautical broadband even at moderate usage levels and take rates. For example, we estimated that at a 25% take-rate, the cost of Ku-band satellite capacity would be between $30K and $80K per plane per year, depending on the amount of bandwidth allocated to each customer. This compares to an amortized satellite equipment cost of perhaps $40K per plane per year. Viasat’s Ka-band satellite could reduce the capacity cost by a factor of up to about 5 times, bringing the cost of capacity down to say $6K to $16K per plane per year.
Thus the strategic question for JetBlue is whether it will use this capacity cost differential to make the service free to end users (or free for most applications other than say streaming video). As noted in past news articles, charging for in-flight broadband has a huge impact on take rates. However, Row 44 (with expensive Ku-band capacity) and Aircell (with a limited amount of terrestrial bandwidth) can’t afford to offer free usage, unless they constrain the service significantly (e.g. no streaming video and limited bandwidth). JetBlue has already offered free (albeit very limited) service on its Beta Blue plane, whereas Southwest (which will set pricing on its Row44-equipped planes) has indicated that it plans to charge for the service.
If JetBlue did offer free service, then this would certainly shake up the in-flight broadband business. Would airlines step-in to pay Aircell directly for their service instead of relying on passenger revenues? Will there be a return of the sponsorship model used on airlines like Virgin America for a period last year? More to the point, will the mere prospect of such disruption cause airlines thinking about installing Ku-band to consider waiting for Inmarsat’s new Ka-band Global Xpress service in 2014?
UPDATE: Now Southwest has agreed to buy AirTran, which already has fleetwide in-flight connectivity through Aircell, will Southwest have yet another reason to reconsider its Ku-band plans with Row44?
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »
