Keeping My World Connected – Because I Need My Fix

IAIN RONIS provides an overview of Forté AirMail, recently launched at NBAA

Budget guidelines. Press releases. Data sheets. Newsletter requests. Vacation balances. Wall Street estimates. Best lines from NCIS. Employee directories. Tradeshow contracts. New product plans. Website updates. Customer relations. Sales quotes. Certification letters. Industry news. These are some of the topics filling my Outlook inbox. How about yours?

So in our attempt to keep on top of it all, many of us have invested in a smartphone – an iPhone, a BlackBerry®, a Droid, or any of the many cellphones now available that connect into our email.

Habit or Addiction?

Yes. Call it what you will, but our new common behavior is to glance at our smartphones several times an hour. (You just looked, didn’t you – admit it!). We’re all guilty of it and no, we make no apologies for this “connected” behavior, do we? After all, if we don’t do it, we’re not being productive. So we check for new emails and new IMs – it’s a habit. And we’re not about to kick it anytime soon.

Getting my fix – OMG!

I check my smartphone anywhere I can – grocery store, gas station, walking the dog, waiting for my caramel macchiato at Starbucks. If I’ve got five free seconds, I’m thumbing the slide lock and eyeballing my iPhone. Why? Because I can.

Until recently, airplanes used to be “I can’t” places. Thanks to systems like GoGo on many airlines, now “I can” on big airplanes. But what about smaller airplanes, like corporate jets? Well, thanks to systems from EMS SATCOM, many corporate aircraft are “I can” places where getting a smartphone fix is easy.

In the corporate aviation marketplace, there are smaller airplanes that are not suited for the antenna requirements of the EMS SATCOM solutions. Thousands of these aircraft have been limited to telephone connectivity options using simple satellite or ground-based services. Better than nothing, these telephones offer passengers and crew with the ability to make and receive calls with the rest of the world. And no other means of communication is as immediate and effective as a one-to-one conversation. But such a system only serves one person at a time, and then only when there is a need for a conversation. Thus, the “phone on the plane” is often reserved for use by the VIP on board. This very expensive gear sits unused most of the time.

Now let’s imagine three retail employees sitting in a small airport waiting to board the small company jet after they spent the day inspecting a new store before its grand opening. They’re chatting about the various issues they found and, yeah, they’re each looking through their smartphone inboxes to see what’s new at the office. Then the company pilot pops his head into the waiting room and invites everyone on-board for the two-hour flight back home. A few minutes later, the pilot is back in the waiting room to get Bob, who’s frantically trying to thumb-type a reply to an urgent email from his boss before getting on the plane. “Sir,” the pilot urges, “we’ve got thunderstorms to beat. You can do your email in-flight – we’re equipped with Forté AirMail”.

Keeping Bob’s world connected. And Kim’s. And Vann’s.

So Bob hops in and buckles up. After take-off, the co-pilot looks back and tells the three that Forté AirMail is now available. And within moments they are each back into their smartphone habits, tapping through emails and feeling connected. Bob is relieved to see his reply going to his boss. The team continues to chat about the new store, firing off emails as decisions are reached to make sure the grand opening is a success.

Forté AirMail

In an odd twist of technology backtracking, Forté AirMail is the result of an older technology fitting perfectly with newer technologies. Forté uses the Iridium satellite network that has limited bandwidth – it supports a data speed similar to the early days of dial-up computer modems. But Iridium is inexpensive, dependable, and perfect for airplanes because the network can be seen anywhere (even the International Space Station keeps a backup Iridium phone, just in case!). But because of the slow data rate, data-hungry laptops don’t work well on the Iridium network; there is so much background activity that even email applications are too slow to be useful.

Smartphones operate differently than laptops. Because they expect to pass data via the cellular network, they’ve been designed to be highly bandwidth efficient, using minimal graphics, data compression, and other tricks. Which is perfect for Iridium!

In addition to having low bandwidth demands, most smartphones are equipped with Wi-Fi so that they can operate without the cellular networks. And this is where Forté AirMail comes in.

Smartphone + Wi-Fi + Forté AirMail + Iridium = Getting my fix in the air!

When Forté AirMail is added to an aircraft with an existing Iridium telephone system, the dedicated AirMail transceiver can share the existing Iridium antenna. This greatly reduces both installation time and cost. While it is possible to add the AirMail component to an existing Iridium transceiver, this will compromise the user experience since AirMail will be unavailable whenever a telephone call is being made.

A complete Forté AirMail system, composed of AirMail, a transceiver, and an antenna, weighs less than eight pounds. Certification is pending and expected by January 2010. Several initial installations are taking place on aircraft ranging from single-engine turboprops to large-cabin corporate jets. The system is the lowest cost Iridium smartphone email product on the market today.

Life is good.

Now, more than ever, productivity in the air is important. Email access is a necessity not just because it helps with productivity, but also because technology has made it possible and affordable. It satisfies our collective habit of checking our smartphones every few minutes and being connected. Corporate aircraft are business tools that move people places. With Forté AirMail, they are no longer just passengers looking out the windows. They are employees continuing to work, getting their fix.