Panasonic and AeroMobile's revelation this week that they face difficulty in securing offerability status from Airbus for the Arinc/Telenor joint venture's in-flight mobile connectivity service (branded by Panasonic as eXPhone) - and allegations by several sources that the European airframer is outright shutting OnAir's competitors out of contention - has prompted a response from Airbus.
Here is Airbus' position in its entirety.
1. Airbus has been listening to its customers' long-standing concerns and is proactively supporting industry-wide initiatives to standardize interfaces between systems and aircraft;
2. Airbus is not opposed to accommodating additional connectivity service providers. In fact we are fully open to receiving requests from other service providers to be present on the hardware platform developed by Airbus, and which would use the standard interfaces and systems that are integrated into the actual aircraft design;
3. Moreover, Airbus does not accept that the aircraft platform architecture should become vendor dependent to exclude other providers -- as that would then create a vendor-monopolistic situation;
4. It is Airbus policy not to comment publicly on the offerability of a specific product or supplier without prior discussion with that supplier or formal notification of a decision.
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