You are correct, all they currently deliver is a moving map, games and some destination videos. This is a battery powered system that requires 2 boxes per aircraft and is recharged every day. Cheap solution for entertainment.
There were 12 vendors providing the same system, half went broke during COVID.
Inflight Dublin and Bluebox are the largest. Both have approached us to enable then. Airfi approached us in 2018 but we declined. Battery powered wifi intranet is a flawed designed. It’s cheap and at least 100 airlines have various version from multiple vendors (many of whom have returned the systems) as they can’t afford real connectivity.
First of all, wifi cannot do SMS. Thats a telco service and you need SMS in Europe for 2 stage credit card authorisation. Only FFlya delivers SMS. Secondly you cannot connect 200 passengers on wifi down a tiny iridium link. It 22/88kbps that’s 200 times slower than what most people have in their home.
So while you will see a lot of hype on these types of system, the fact is wifi needs broadband and low cost airlines cannot justify the high cost of broadband as no one they carry will pay.
Having said that, you can connect one or two payment terminals via wifi using Iridium, but again on wifi you need multiple boxes to cover the aircraft and a dual satellite link. Airbus specifies you need 3-4 wifi access points to cover an a32x aircraft
That’s why we invented FFlya with Bluetooth. Only FFlya can connect everyone onboard with free messaging including the crew and payment terminals with a single low cost access point, plus we have flight proven 2 stage authorisation.
FYI recently Delta announced delivering free messaging but reportedly they need to invest $1billion to make it happen. The inflight wifi model is broken! Either the passengers pay or the airline pays. For low cost airlines it does not add up.
The world is obsessed with wifi and that’s fine on the ground, but pump it via a 3-13 billion dollar satellite network and that’s another story.
If it’s so cheap and accessible why does Elon musk charge US$100 per month and $25k per month on his new bizjet system.
Fact: You will never have cheap wifi via a satellite. Just the cost alone to get them up their kills it.
Historically Satellite wifi is for those who have no other option. That’s why we invented FFlya.
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