Welcome to the #PaxEx Podcast, which tracks the evolution of the airline passenger experience and industry’s sustainability initiatives. We’re pleased to share our interview with Hughes Network Systems SVP aviation business unit Reza Rasoulian, which was conducted on the sidelines of the APEX Global Expo in Long Beach.
Rasoulian has made no secret about his frustration with today’s inflight Wi-Fi.
“I really pay attention now every kind of minute of my flight; you know 80-90% of the flights that I travel on, I have an interruption or a disconnect. On a five-and-a-half-hour flight from Dulles to LAX” to attend the APEX Global Expo in Long Beach, “I had a great experience for the first couple of hours and then the last few hours, not so much,” he told Runway Girl Network.
“And it’s interesting, I was in Las Vegas last week. Similarly, I don’t know what it is — and the provider will remain nameless — but west of the Mississippi, it’s like, what is going on? …. And you know, we’re paying, I’m paying for this so it’s absolutely frustrating.”
We can sympathize. Having written about IFC since the early days of Tenzing and Connexion by Boeing (gulp), it does sometimes feel like consistently great inflight Wi-Fi remains that elusive Holy Grail (though some of the legacy services have improved in recent years.)
When it comes to satellite systems, specifically, “there is no perfect solution,” Rasoulian said candidly. “So, I think the way we think about it is having more optionality, having [the] ability to access multiple GEO satellites, multiple LEO constellations, plural, right, and NGSO, you know MEO constellations; not to limit oneself is important.”
Having optionality, layered capacity, whether it’s a GEO or NGSO situation is very, very important.
At the same time, he reckons there will be occasions where LEO-specific IFC will make sense. To that end, Hughes is gearing up to introduce its ESA-based solution, powered by Eutelsat OneWeb, for the commercial aviation market in the first half of 2025, and feels confident about that timeline given Gogo’s successful flight testing of Galileo, which is based on Hughes’ ESA hardware.
RGN’s full recorded interview with Rasoulian covers a lot of ground, starting with those Galileo tests; segueing into what differentiates Eutelsat OneWeb LEO from the other LEO constellation, which carries consumer subscribers; and onto the compelling potential possibility of offering a hybrid Ku/Ka LEO-LEO IFC offering comprising Eutelsat OneWeb Ku and Telesat Lightspeed Ka.
We also discussed Hughes’ unique positioning — including its Hughes In-Flight connectivity management system (IFCM) — and whether or not SpaceX’s Starlink has a real shot at vacuuming up the IFC market. The Hughes executive warned about the danger to airlines of putting “your eggs in one basket” and eschewing optionality.
“I think maybe five years ago there was a certain provider that was winning all the business. And you know, I think today you fly on some of those aircraft and it’s like, wow, you know it’s difficult. And look, you know, we live in an imperfect world. And that’s how we concluded that optionality is important…”
Music license: Adventurous Life by L-Ray Music, PremiumBeat by Shutterstock
