The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted Thales a blanket license authorisation for its airborne terminals to communicate with the EchoStar XVII, EchoStar XIX, AMC-15 and AMC-16 geostationary satellites.
The FCC has granted Thales this license to use its terminals on all U.S. and non-U.S. registered aircraft anywhere in the network’s coverage footprint for all four satellites in operation.
The company says this 15-year license is a significant milestone for the launch of its FlytLIVE network.
Thales says it is paving the way to conclude registrations with other regulatory administrations throughout the Americas region.
Dominique Giannoni, the CEO of Thales InFlyt Experience, said: “This is a necessary step to launch a service this year on our new FlytLIVE Ka-band network for the Americas.
“This terminal will operate with all four satellites we have deployed in our network. The satellites, terminal, and network technologies are all converging to meet our programme objectives.”
This license allows the company to begin extensive network testing this year as initially projected, leading to commercial service availability in late 2017.
This is the latest development to the announcements made by Thales and SES earlier this year for a set of strategic agreements with Hughes to enhance the delivery of FlytLIVE which will provide increased capacity, coverage and redundancy over the Americas.
In 2016, it announced its initial two agreements with SES.
With these agreements, Thales will offer airlines the most efficient inflight connectivity experience and will add to its network the new SES-17 satellite – uniquely designed for aeronautical connectivity – to be launched in 2020.
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