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Inmarsat shows SwiftBroadband

DUBAI— Inmarsat , one of the leading providers of satellite communications to the aeronautical market, yesterday previewed its forthcoming SwiftBroadband service on the Inmarsat stand at the 9th international aerospace exhibition in Dubai.

SwiftBroadband is Inmarsat's next-generation aeronautical service that will offer inflight voice and data connectivity, at up to 432kbps per channel, for use by both passengers and aircraft crew.

SwiftBroadband will be supported by Inmarst -4 satellite launched in the first week of November and is the second in a planned two-satellite constellation, representing an eight-year development and $1.5 billion investment from the company. The higher bandwidth of the SwiftBroadband will allow AeroMobile to provide new data applications such as GPRS and Wi-Fi data for passengers PDAs, BlackBerrys and laptops. This will be beneficial for business passengers looking forward to regular use of mobile telephones and data devices while in flight. Lars Ringertz, head of marketing for aeronautical services at Inmarsat, told Khaleej Times, "We have seen tremendous growth of our Swift64 service in the last two years, the launch of two new satellites in 2005, several exciting announcements from partners OnAir and AeroMobile about inflight GSM services, and now we are starting to preview SwiftBroadband to an eager audience of aeronautical users."

The live demonstration used the first Inmarsat-4 satellite located over the Indian Ocean, and came less than two weeks after the launch of the second Inmarsat-4 satellite, which is currently undergoing in-orbit tests before being positioned over the Americas. It also followed the successful demonstration of AeroMobile's inflight GSM service on a Boeing 777-200LR, which uses the Inmarsat network.

The first SwiftBroadband avionics will take to the air during next year, and the SwiftBroadband service is expected to become commercially available before the end of 2006. The SwiftBroadband will also be available in the new Airbus 380 and new aircrafts.