Now Covering Canada, Mexico, Caribbean
ARINC Direct tells ANN that a major expansion of coverage for
its SKYLink satellite broadband service, the world’s only
ultra-high speed satellite broadband communications solution for
business aircraft.
Effective immediately, the SKYLink service satellite coverage
footprint has been extended beyond the U.S. continental borders to
cover major population centers in Canada, northern Mexico, the Gulf
of Mexico, Yucatan peninsula, and much of the Caribbean. Offshore
coverage on the U.S. east and west coasts is also increased by
hundreds of miles.
The service coverage
expansion is provided by a change of satellites. SKYLink service
has been switched from satellite AMC-1 to AMC-6 located at 72
degrees West Longitude, a new Ku-band satellite of SKYLink partner
and investor SES AMERICOM. SKYLink’s two-way broadband access
originally went live in April 2005. Up to 1000 aircraft can use
SKYLink over the continental U.S. under ARINC’s FCC
license.
“We continue to work closely with our partner and
investor, SES AMERICOM, to bring the best service coverage possible
to our many business aircraft customers,” stated Robert
Thompson, ARINC Senior Director, Satellite Services. “The
switch to the new satellite occurred on the night of 15 October and
was performed by ViaSat, Inc., our ground earth station operator
and provider of the SKYLink avionics. ViaSat had automatically
uploaded the new satellite coordinates over the air to our
customers’ aircraft, and on Sunday when customers’
aircraft logged on to the system, the SKYLink avionics
automatically pointed to AMC-6. The switchover was flawless,”
Thompson said.
The enhanced coverage of AMC-6 will soon be augmented by SKYLink
service over the North Atlantic and in the European, Middle East
and Africa (EMEA) regions. EMEA coverage will be provided by end of
year 2005, and North Atlantic coverage by 1st quarter 2006. When in
place, business aircraft operators will have continuous SKYLink
coverage from the west coast of the United States all the way to
the Middle East.
SKYLink, the world’s first ultra-high speed satellite
broadband communication solution for business aircraft, turns the
corporate aircraft into an “office in the sky,” with
network connectivity in flight similar to today’s high speed
terrestrial connections. SKYLink takes full advantage of Ku-band
satellite capacity to offer a wide range of business applications,
including high-speed Internet access, E-mail, corporate Intranet
access, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and fully-managed private
Voice over IP telephony and Fax over IP services. Also planned soon
is in-flight videoconferencing capability.
SKYLink is available today as original equipment on Gulfstream
G350, G450, G500, and G550 business jets. Gulfstream also offers
retrofit installations of SKYLink on all its large cabin aircraft
in current production. Gulfstream will install SKYLink on other
types of business aircraft through its General Dynamics Aviation
Services facilities.