Wireless Cabin Market Assessment Survey

Imagine you are flying in an airliner - someone in the office calls you on your mobile to tell you that your presentation was changed by your boss. You switch on your laptop, connect wireless to your company intranet and download the file. Alternatively, you could be going on holiday and you start wondering about the local attractions at your holiday destination, get out your PDA and hook up to the Internet. Far fetched? In 1 year time we aim to have demonstrated this technology.

Market Survey 
A market survey was conducted by ESYS plc  http://www.esys.co.uk  . 

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About This Survey
This survey was conducted for the wireless cabin consortium by ESYS plc. The consortium is co-ordinated by the German aerospace centre DLR and is backed by a team of major industry players including Airbus, Ericsson, Inmarsat, Information Society Technologies, KID-Systeme, Siemens, TriaGnoSys and University of Bradford This survey was anonymous. No personally identifiable information was collected by this survey. If you wish to get more infromation, please contact Dr Andrew Rogoyski at ESYS plc.

Key Findings

This survey presents an assessment of the market for the provision of voice and data services within passenger aircraft. It has achieved this through surveys of airline passengers, airlines and associated industries.

• There is evidence among passengers, the airlines and the associated industry that wireless services are or will be in demand, for a number of different reasons. For the passenger, the ability to use their own mobile phone, preferably billing direct to their terrestrial mobile operator, is a valuable service, provided that issues such as noise nuisance can be solved. In addition, for many passengers, the ability to access their e-mail and a variety of Internet services is of strong interest, provided that issues such as device configuration can be solved. 
• Wireless technology is expected to be beneficial to the airlines, offering them the chance to take significant weight out of their aircraft and reduce maintenance costs. Wireless technology also offers them the opportunity to improve support for crew services and aircraft maintenance, whilst enabling them to be more flexible in the way that equipment is deployed within the aircraft. 
• The key concern is associated with aircraft safety and passenger perception thereof, i.e. that the wireless technologies must be proved not to interfere with aircraft flight and navigation systems and that such flight certification can be achieved on a global basis.
• There remains a degree of uncertainty in several areas of the technical and commercial design of a fully-fledged Wireless Cabin. One of the key drivers is to ensure that the satellite capacity provided to the aircraft is efficiently utilised. This strongly depends on passenger habits, a factor that will undoubtedly change once the first services are established and demand grows. Subtle factors, such as the apparent difference in usage patterns displayed by passengers in different parts of the world, need to be properly understood and factored into the creation of a commercial service. Passenger usage is, in turn, driven by developments in mobile telephony and the computer industry. For example, the take-up of 802.11 (Wi-Fi) or the convergence of mobile telephones, PDAs and laptop computers, will strongly influence the technical design of wireless services in aircraft.