Annapolis, Maryland, USA, September 9, 2008 — ARINC Incorporated today announced it has added Inmarsat SwiftBroadband to its portfolio and is selling the connectivity service and applications to the aviation market.
ARINC has made major enhancements to its OiTM Onboard Internet offering to take advantage of the increased bandwidth available with SwiftBroadband. Passengers accessing Oi from their laptops will be now be able to watch the latest news and sports content from the world’s major news and sports providers.
ARINC can now offer a real-time credit approval capability to Oi which will enable airlines to offer pay-per-view entertainment to passengers during flight, with convenient and discreet payment on their personal credit cards.
“As ARINC is a SwiftBroadband Service Provider, it was logical that our passenger applications would take advantage of the higher connectivity speeds,” stated Andy Hubbard, ARINC Senior Director, Satellite Solutions. “We have included more content that our airlines and their passengers want, such as special events, news round-ups, and sports highlights. In addition, the unique Oi credit card payment feature opens a whole new level of sales and a potential revenue stream.”
All the enhancements are now added to the standard Oi offering, which includes laptop connectivity for passengers with real-time Internet browsing, and e-mail and chat capability.
“Inmarsat is really pleased that ARINC has embraced the technology of SwiftBroadband,” said Lars Ringertz, Head of Marketing Aeronautical Business for Inmarsat. “With the development of Oi, they can offer a one-stop shop to airlines for the SwiftBroadband service and passenger applications.”
To accommodate the data handling requirements of its expanded onboard program content and passenger Internet connectivity, ARINC has increased the data transfer capabilities of the Oi system. During flight the Oi technology makes optimal use of the bandwidth available from Inmarsat SwiftBroadband satellite services.
Larger content updates will be performed on the ground by wireless broadband data delivery using ARINC’s new GateFusionSM local Wi-Fi data system. The GateFusion technology enables automatic transfers of large data blocks of content whenever the aircraft is within range of the destination gate.
ARINC Incorporated, a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group, provides communications, engineering and integration solutions for commercial, defense and government customers worldwide. Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland with regional headquarters in London and Singapore, ARINC is ISO 9001:2000 certified. For more information, visit the web site at www.arinc.com.
