There's an In-Flight Connectivity Bubble That's About to Burst

New developments in the aviation connectivity market now happen at speeds which surpass even the fastest connections on offer. Just last week, while a suggestion was made at the SITA IT Summit that this market is in a bubble and industry consolidation is sure to follow, Panasonic Avionics Corporation (Panasonic) announced a new agreement with Eutelsat America Corp. (EAC) to deploy a new satellite in 2017 which will provide connection speeds at 200 Mbps; and, at very the same Summit, JetBlue announced that it will launch a new satellite to expand popular its Fly-Fi network. This follows recent announcements by AT&T and Honeywell that they will collaborate to establish a 4G Hybrid Air-to-Ground Network in the United States to supply connectivity demand from airlines; and Inmarsat's announcement that it too that it will establish a 4G Europasat Hybrid Satellite/Air-to-Ground Network to provide more connectivity options in Europe (and possibly beyond), with British Airways the first likely airline to adopt. These followed the reveal from Gogo of their new 2Ku Wi-Fi service at the Aircraft Interiors Expo this April. So what is really going on here? Is there a frenzy of excitement over this technology with no basis for demand, as the term "bubble" would suggest? Are all these mega-corporations--and other players in this sector--simply high on Wi-Fi? Will there be a connectivity market collapse--or are we missing something? We decided to take advantage of the participation at the Summit by OnAir, who was part of the discussion where the issue of a bubble was first mentioned, and met one-on-one with OnAir's CEO, Ian Dawkins, to ask these questions outright. This came just after we reported on OnAir's petition to U.S. regulators and legislators that they not impose an outright ban