Press Release

Issued by Eclipse Global Connectivity.

February 11, 2015

Eclipse, the French communications integrator, has recently completed a major satcom upgrade on an African head of state wide-bodied Boeing aircraft, adding Wi-Fi capability and enabling the use of the Inmarsat swift broadband network. The engineering expertise and ability to provide the both the hardware and airtime were the key to selection of Eclipse for this high profile and time critical project.

The Eclipse engineering team were involved from the very beginning, performing the initial survey of the aircraft before making detailed drawings of the modification and providing several installation options to the end customer.

With one of Eclipse's EASA approved installation and design organisations, the final system was selected and at the heart of this is the Satcom Direct Router (SDR). The SDR is a new and innovative satcom router that provides powerful functionality to the end customer, including multiple Wi-Fi environments and user-priority of the available bandwidth. The unit can be connect to the currently available Inmarsat satcom systems as well as ViaSat's Ku-Band offering, but is future-proofed and has been designed to work with the upcoming Inmarsat GX Aviation Ka-Band service.

The engineering support from Eclipse for this Head of State project proved invaluable and ensured the timely completion of the project, adding no delay to the delivery of the aircraft to the end customer. Work undertaken included pre-installation checks, particularly relating to the wiring runs and the change of the Diplexer Low Noise Amplifier (DLNA) which is required to support the Swift Broadband service. On-aircraft verification work was also provided to ensure that the system was correctly configured to the customer’s specification and fully functional.  Finally, the Eclipse engineers provided hands-on user training to the aircraft crew to ensure complete familiarity with all the system functions. In support of this upgrade, Eclipse installed an SDR in our Paris headquarters for the engineers to make customer configurations and test any particular functionality prior to installation on customer aircraft. The ability for Eclipse to intimately understand the complex hardware that are often required for satcom installations, combined with the excellent service provision makes for a very unique position in the market place.  Eclipse has recently been appointed as a reseller of the SDR, and this installation was the first unit delivered under the agreement. Eclipse has subsequently made several commercial offers for the supply of the SDR to vvip customers looking to modernise their satcom installation to higher data rates.