[Via Satellite 09-04-2014] In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) services provider Global Eagle Entertainment<\/b> is looking heavily at opportunities for new In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) customers outside of the United States. Speaking at the Citi 2014 Global Technology Conference, Global Eagle CEO Dave Davis told investors that the IFC component of the company\u2019s business is growing faster than the rest, and that international markets will be a top focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the penetration of worldwide airline fleets with some sort of connectivity onboard today, internationally less than 6 percent of the aircraft flying have some form of connectivity. In the U.S. that\u2019s north of 50 percent,\u201d said Davis.<\/p>\n
According to Davis, Global Eagle controls 60 to 70 percent of the content delivery market. The company provides hardware-agnostic embedded systems, and has begun offering wireless non-Internet based entertainment distributed from onboard planes. But this unconnected service is new, he said, whereas IFC is seeing market growth of up to 30 percent a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the largest fleet of satellite-based connectivity systems installed today; about 570 aircraft are flying around the world with our satellite based system installed. The market is growing very rapidly. The U.S. is largely built out but internationally this is a wide open business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Global Eagle provides IFC globally through Ku-band satellites. Davis expressed confidence that satellite would be the company\u2019s long-term strategy, showing little interest in Air-to-Ground (ATG) networks, since they cannot connect aircraft as they fly across oceans. Furthermore, satellites can provide higher bandwidth speeds and bypass the regulatory steps needed to install large terrestrial systems. \u201cThe game internationally is satellite based,\u201d said Davis.<\/p>\n
The global market for IFC has grown more appealing for other providers as well. Gogo<\/b> has set its sight on international markets, as the company shifts to lean more heavily on satellite than ATG. Panasonic Avionics<\/b> too, is looking worldwide, having signed for a dedicated IFC payload over the Asia-Pacific region on Eutelsat<\/b>\u2019s upcoming satellite Eutelsat 172b.<\/p>\n
Global Eagle\u2019s largest IFC customer is Southwest Airlines<\/b>, with roughly 450 connected aircraft, according to Davis. Norwegian Air Shuttle<\/b> is the company\u2019s largest European customer, with 70 connected aircraft today and many more on order. Davis said two Russian airlines have signed up for IFC, as well as other international airlines such as Icelandair<\/b>, Air China<\/b> and South Africa-based Mango Airlines<\/b>.<\/p>\n
In Thailand, Global Eagle has partnered with Nok Air<\/b> and Thaicom<\/b> to provide connectivity this year. Davis said the partnership will be a major strategy going forward. He admitted that it makes sense for telcos to offer IFC, but said it is a challenging market to enter domestically because most contracts are long term, often reaching out to 2018 or 2020. Davis expects more future contracts to mimic the model laid out between Global Eagle, Thaicom and Nok Air.<\/p>\n
He also hinted that partnerships would be used to evaluate new frequencies beyond Ku-band. \u201cWe are exploring a Ka offering as well,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we did something in the Ka world, it would be with a partner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 09-04-2014] In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) services provider Global Eagle Entertainment is looking heavily at opportunities for new In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) customers outside of the United States. Speaking at the Citi 2014 Global Technology Conference, Global Eagle CEO Dave Davis told investors that the IFC component of the company\u2019s business is growing faster than the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}