In-Flight Connectivity Elavating the Aeronautical Satcom Market

Cambridge, Mass., May 14, 2013--According to NSR's newest market research report, Aeronautical Satcom Markets, in-flight entertainment and connectivity will grow the use of satellite services in the next ten years to reach $3.4 billion in revenues. This trend will be strongest in the narrow-body and wide-body aircraft market where the race is on between providers of high capacity bandwidth to support airlines’ desire for in-flight connectivity as a major differentiating factor in a difficult market. With impressive growth projected in all markets, NSR expects the aeronautical segment to be one of the most important satcom growth markets over the next decade.

As bandwidth increases to meet the needs of a commercial passenger market on the rise, there will be a wave of airlines in the short- to mid-term aiming to install and offer Wi-Fi, GSM, voice and data services. And with new systems launched offering tens of Mbps to a single aircraft, there is an increasing aspiration by airlines to afford high throughput satellite (HTS) capacity as a means to sustain demand.

“In the next ten years, the aeronautical satcom market will see close to 80,000 in-service units across L-band, Ku-band and HTS satellites to serve both passengers and crew,” said Claude Rousseau, Senior Analyst with NSR and author of the study. “Even if a majority of units will be for basic communications, the big revenue driver will be in-flight entertainment connectivity systems, which will drive Ku-band and HTS transponder demand and generate $670 million in capacity revenues,” said Rousseau.

Aeronautical Satcom Markets builds on NSR’s industry-leading MSS market research and goes in-depth into four airframe markets. With more added value and deeper vertical analysis than ever before, this new NSR report provides the most detailed quantitative analysis of any aero report within the industry. The report provides a complete and comprehensive analysis of addressable markets, demand trends for the aeronautical satcom market today, covering five continents and all oceanic regions. The report includes forecasting of equipment, services, transponder demand and HTS capacity in the wide-body, narrow-body, general aviation & rotor wing and business jet market for commercial and government customers, and for in-flight entertainment & connectivity (IFEC) and safety of flight services over the period 2012-2022. Aeronautical Satcom Markets is a multi-client report now available from NSR. For additional information on this report, including a full table of contents, list of figures and executive summary, please visit www.nsr.com or call NSR at 617-576-5771.