Thales has become more vocal about its TopConnect suite of connectivity solutions of late. The company gave a solid break-down of TopConnect in Paris and then went on video with moi to explain things further.
But before Paris, Thales was in Vancouver for Inmarsat's aeronautical conference. There Thales head of AVS civil business Andrew Musgrave showed a brilliant video of Thales engineers putting TopConnect through its paces during in-flight testing on a McDonnell Douglas DC-9.
Using Inmarsat's higher-bandwidth aeronautical service SwiftBroadband, TopConnect is able to support Internet browsing, Wi-Fi connectivity, GSM and corded or cordless voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephones. Thales is also working on an integrated in-flight entertainment (IFE) system.
Airbus/SITA joint venture OnAir acts as Thales' service provider for TopConnect's GSM and GPRS solutions. You can see where some of those deals stand (in the graph to the right...click on the image to make it bigger).
Now then, while I haven't convinced Thales to cough up that video of the DC-9 flight-tests - come on guys, please? - I did get my paws on Musgrave's speech in Vancouver.
Here are some useful slides (in keeping with our desire for visuals).
The first shows the TopConnect architecture (wouldn't "Leaky Line" make a great band name?) Ahem. That's not to discount its importance, of course.
The next slide shows how the whole kitten caboodle comes together for a complete offering in the cockpit and the cabin.
Oh go on then and read the whole thing. You'll find it at the following link.
Thu_AM-Thales_Musgrave (2).pdf
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