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LTE Vehicle Modem/Router (aka In-flight WiFi)


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Does anyone one have experience with or recommendations for in-flight wifi?

 

I am looking at the CradlePoint COR IBR 200 or the Motorola VML750 for an air ambulance application to provide somewhat reliable in-flight WiFi to the crew without going to satellite. Those are very popular solutions in the ground first responder space.

 

It occurs to me that someone out there must have already tried some in-flight wi-fi solutions. I'd love to hear any real world experiences or recommendations.

 

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Does anyone one have experience with or recommendations for in-flight wifi?

I am looking at the CradlePoint COR IBR 200 or the Motorola VML750 for an air ambulance application to provide somewhat reliable in-flight WiFi to the crew without going to satellite.

 

No direct experience with the modems you listed; however, I've used a similar model, the Pepwave MAX BR1 Router with WiFi 3G/4G/LTE Modem. Worked fine over large metropolitan areas were the cellular antenna was mounted to the bottom of the aircraft and most all flights were below 1.5 AGL. My experience mostly over Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco & Bay Area, Los Angeles Area, San Diego, again flights below 1.5 AGL.

 

Cross-country flights over sparsely populated areas, mountainous terrain were uninterrupted cellular communication is required, move on to satellite.

 

It’s ironic that you brought up another form of that acronym, LTE, that’s also confusing and misunderstood.

 

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was established to set standards and specifications for global telecommunications and communication technologies. That includes all cellular communication technologies. The 1G – 5G networks we hear about are the levels or generations of standards and technical specifications set by the ITU.

 

When the ITU set the fourth generation of standards (4G) a decade ago, none of the cellular companies could meet the full implementation of those standards. The ITU sets goals in advance of the current technology and it was meant to be an evolutionary process for future goals in communication technologies.

 

One of the many specifications at that time was a minimum and maximum bit rate. The minimum bit rate was 100Mbps download, maximum 1Gbps download and 500Mbps upload. Most didn’t meet the full implementation of the standard not even the minimum, but they were still calling it 4G. Consequently, the ITU got involved and they said okay, we’ll use the 4G designation even though you don’t meet the full implementation and we’ll refer to it as 4G Long Term Evolution (4G LTE).

 

As companies came within reach of the full implementation of the 4G standard, they ran into a small problem, a marketing problem. We can’t drop the LTE from our designation, that would open up questions and maybe telling customers the real reason, we’re just now meeting the full implementation for 4G. We need to do it another way. Drop the LTE and call it 4G Advanced or 4G Plus.

 

I don’t know if some of you recall when AT&T jumped out with their so-called 5G. They had to take a step back, now they refer to it as the 5G Evolution. The 5G at last quote, ups the ante, 1Gbps upload minimum and 20Gbps upload maximum.

Edited by iChris
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