Original Equipment Manufacturers: November 2008 Archives

I spent most of yesterday touring LiveTV's hangar at Orlando International Airport and its headquarters in nearby Melbourne, Florida. In Melbourne, I got a chance to experience LiveTV's latest-generation live television system, LTV3, which we'll chat about later in more detail here (suffice it to say, the system is pretty damn awesome).

But I also had the opportunity to learn about LiveTV's three-pronged connectivity strategy, which involves offering its basic Kiteline messaging and email product to airline customers now (parent JetBlue is flying the service) while developing two broader solutions for the future, including Oasis which will offer a "feels like broadband" experience by cleverly combining Kiteline with the stored content-upload capabilities of LiveTV's wireless aircraft data link (WADL) system. I should stress that Oasis hasn't been officially launched, but managment is eyeing a possible 2009 service entry.

I've written a fuller piece about it for Flight, which can be accessed by either clicking on this link or scrolling down a bit further, whichever is easier for ya. And I've tapped IFE&C consultant Michael Planey to give us his two cents about Oasis. More from Planey later.

LiveTV reveals a "feels like broadband" in-flight solution
By Mary Kirby

LiveTV is developing a new connectivity solution that would enable carriers to offer passengers a broadband-like experience during flight with substantial ease.

The service, dubbed Oasis, has not yet been launched, although this could occur as early as 2009, said LiveTV co-founder and chief technology officer Jeff Frisco from the company's headquarters in Melbourne, Florida.

Significantly, however, LiveTV is open to offering Oasis to current airline customers of its live television systems or on a standalone basis.

"A great target may be regional fleets that cannot support a pay model. This could be standalone," says LiveTV VP of marketing and sales Mike Moeller.

He stresses, however, that LiveTV's business strategy of offering "IFE first and connectivity second" remains in play.

LiveTV is best known for its highly successful live television systems, which are installed on the fleets of parent JetBlue Airways, Frontier Airlines, WestJet in Canada and Australia's Virgin Blue. Continental Airlines is LiveTV's newest customer and will offer satellite programming on a large portion of its Boeing narrowbody fleet beginning early next year.

However, in late 2007 LiveTV began offering a basic in-flight connectivity service called Kiteline on a JetBlue aircraft. Kiteline supports free messaging and e-mail using the 1MHz slice of air-to-ground (ATG) spectrum that LiveTV acquired during the US Federal Communications Commission's 2006 auction of 4HHz of spectrum in the 800MHz band allocated to ATG services.

JetBlue recently said it intends to offer fleet-wide connectivity after testing Kiteline, while Frontier and Continental are also turning to LiveTV for connectivity.

Oasis, named thusly because it is "a beautiful place made possible with data", represents the second step in LiveTV's connectivity strategy, says Frisco. The service will combine the low data rate capability of Kiteline with LiveTV's ability to upload large amounts of cached content to onboard servers via its wireless aircraft data link (WADL).

For several years WADL has provided JetBlue with continuous remote-video monitoring of its aircraft cabins on the ground. But it also enables movies as well as relatively fresh stored content to be uploaded to the aircraft.

By harnessing Kiteline and WADL, LiveTV will be able to offer a "feels like broadband" experience, says Frisco. The solution would be cost efficient because content storage "is cheap".

Moeller says access to Oasis and "various aspects" of the service would be free for passengers, including possibly email. Other parts of the service - movies for instance - would cost a fee.

At present, a number of in-flight connectivity providers are either offering or are planning to offer broadband solutions, including Ku band-based ViaSat, Row 44 and Panasonic as well as ATG-based Aircell, which owns an exclusive 3MHz license to provide wireless broadband on commercial aircraft.

Aircell's system is currently being trialled on American Airlines' fleet of 15 transcontinental Boeing 767-200s. So far the Colorado-based firm has kept usage data close to its chest.

IFE and in-flight connectivity consultant Michael Planey believes that with Oasis, LiveTV is proposing "a reasonable approach that allows its customers to essentially dip their toe into the water without having to jump into the water and sign up for a 10-year agreement for connectivity services, which is the kind of stuff that Aircell and Row 44 are proposing".

In five years, the passenger demand for broadband "will outstrip what this Kiteline and Oasis product will be able to deliver", he suggests, but this will give LiveTV time to develop a broadband connectivity solution for customers.

LiveTV is already making headway on this front. The third step in the firm's three-pronged connectivity strategy involves potentially offering a Ku band-based solution in tandem with LiveTV's soon-to-be-launched third generation live television system. LiveTV engineers are currently working on an antenna to support the dual service.

LiveTV is not yet convinced, however, that there is a market for a pay-for-service broadband connectivity model and continues to take a "hedge and wait" approach.

"If Row 44 and Aircell prove that people will pay $10 or $20 [for broadband] and the doubt is out of the model, we can do a new antenna that does both [DBS] TV and broadband," says Frisco.

Nonetheless, LiveTV still sees live television as the killer application for today's entertainment-hungry world. "TV is the drug," says Frisco.

 

Updated to include Delta comment...see end of story

Delta Air Lines calls the Boeing 767 the workhorse of its international fleet. That workhorse was tested recently when a flight from Atlanta to Moscow apparently lost power to one of its two engines. The aircraft landed safely in Moscow.  

I haven't seen any formal safety reports about the incident yet, but The Aviation Herald says the Pratt & Whitney PW4060-powered 767-300 is registered N181DN. A pic of the aircraft is available at this Flickr account.

Mike Moeller, an executive at JetBlue Airways subsidiary LiveTV, happened to be on that flight as he and has wife were travelling to Russia to adopt their beautiful new son Liam. Mike recounts his experience on his family's blog. Key passage:

"After flying all night, we were awaken around 8:00 Moscow time (two hours before landing) to breakfast. As we opened our breakfast and were about to be served something to drink, something happened. Suddenly, the plane's engines got quieter, we slowed, all the lights and in flight entertainment went out. No more air coming from the overhead consoles.

"We had lost power. I noticed along with a couple of other people that something was up, but the rest of the passengers continued as is. About 20 seconds later, the head flight attendant came running down the aisle and whispered to the other flight attendants. They very quickly took the carts to the back and sat down. The head flight attendant continued as he ran to the front of the plane and soon returned to look out the windows.

"I then wondered: Have we lost an engine? (I read something about Delta and American losing an engine 2 weeks ago on 767 flights) Is something up with Russia and we cannot land? Is there fighter airplanes outside the widow? Where are we going to land?

"After about 20 minutes, the captain came on 'We have lost and engine (we have two by the way) and will be landing soon'."

The full text of Mike's blog post is definitely worth a read. I admire he and his wife's faith that everything would be alright. Frankly, I would have been a nervous wreck especially after flight attendants began the process of reviewing the fundamentals of crash landing with passengers.

Delta has been in the news of late for other engine issues. You'll recall that the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) last month issued an urgent recommendation to FAA to require operators to cut inspection intervals for Pratt & Whitney PW2037 engines to prevent uncontained failures. As reported by Flight's John Croft, the NTSB request is tied to an ongoing investigation of a 6 August incident at Las Vegas McCarran International airport where a Delta Air Lines Boeing 757-200 experienced an uncontained engine failure during its takeoff run.

Investigators later learned that at least four other PW2037 second stage turbine hubs had experienced cracks in the blade retaining lugs, and that during a routine overhaul, American Airlines uncovered a PW2037 second stage turbine hub with cracks in two adjacent blade retaining lugs.

Asked to comment on the Atlanta-Moscow incidednt, a Delta spokesman says: "Pilots received indication light on the left-side engine. Moscow was the closest airport. They powered down the engine. Engine type was PW4000, Flight #46."

My chat with Panasonic director of product marketing Cedric Rhoads about wireless IFE was fruitful indeed. Unfortunately, word count constraints prevented me from using all of his best quotes in my recent Flight piece concerning this subject.

So in classic note-dumping style, here is Part 2 and 3 from that conversation. Part 1 can be found here. (Note: the bolded text within the gray box specifically addresses Bluebox's prior comments about Pansonic and Thales).

2) The challenges of wireless cited in the past by Boeing, Panasonic and Thales - have these been resolved?

"I think that some of the issues have been resolved. At the time that Boeing was making decisions regarding the 787, there was a lot of concern about the 802.11n technology's specification not having yet been ratified by IEEE. There was no clearly defined standard due to lack of ratification, so there was still a lot of movement in the technology itself and as such, no clear supplier base. There was also concern that commitment to a specific variant in the absence of the ratified spec would likely create a lot of obsolescence issues. With the ratification of the 11n spec, this challenge has been overcome."

"One of the other things we learned during the 787 wireless IFE project was that, ultimately, the weight savings in moving to a wireless distribution architecture was not realized as originally envisioned. The concern for us was that the value of wireless was not there and it represented a very big trade-off in bandwidth, and thus capability."

"The two other significant challenges that affected wireless at the time still remain. Mr. Stuart's comment that we weren't 'up to the challenge' (of wireless IFE) was unfortunate; we did it and it worked; it was Boeing that ultimately decided against it because of other factors."

"One of the challenges was the issue of frequency spectrum allocation within the different countries where a wireless IFE system would be expected to operate in an airline environment.  Unlike using a fixed Wi-Fi router in your home or office, an aircraft may have to operate in a country that does not have the spectrum to effectively operate a wireless-based IFE system. At the time, there were insufficient 802.11 channels available in several countries (e.g., China) to ensure a fully functional system in all intended operational geographies."

"In the 787 wireless IFE design there was insufficient 802.11 spectrum to give us what we needed to do a wireless network serving 250 passengers with centrally stored, on-demand content on dedicated wireless channels. Across the 787 type cabin, and this was roughly in the range of about 250 seats, we had to reuse spectrum from the front to the rear of the aircraft to ensure sufficient on-demand bandwidth. The consequence of this was that very specific, custom antennas were required to mitigate interference in the re-used channels that had to operate simultaneously within the same airframe." 

"As I understand it, the Bluebox solution differs in one fundamental regard; they are providing local storage on the user's device, from which the user will access their desired content.  At the time of the 787 Wireless IFE study, content was served wirelessly from head-end-based storage. With local content storage, you solve the bandwidth challenges of serving wireless on-demand content, but you create another challenge:  Content synchronization (storage) across all of the end-user devices each time the content is updated.  The challenge, of course, is the speed at which you can update the content.   The 802.11n technology is the most capable wireless technology today for use in a cabin environment, and yet moving a terabyte of content across 250 seats--essentially 250 terabytes of content migration--is going to take a significant amount of time. This creates a natural limitation in the amount of content you can host when using a wireless distribution methodology.  Further, the cost and adaptability (to in-seat devices) of large-capacity hard-drives is a difficult challenge; typically, you must compromise on the size of these drives (vs. distributed system architectures.)"

"That means that customers who select local-storage systems are going to have to accept this trade-off in that they will not be able to carry the same amount of content.  You must decide either a) less content, or b) a longer period where devices are not synchronized."

3) Does Panasonic have any sort of timeline for bringing something to market (especially in light of competition from Bluebox and no doubt others)?

"Panasonic focuses onboth the OEM requirements and our customer's requirements.  We already possess a variety of solutions and we continue to adapt or innovate to meet the changing demands of the market. We're working closely with Airbus and our customers on the A350 design and will provide a robust product line for this market.  I'm not at liberty to disclose the specifics of schedule or technology at this time."