Vueling and Telefonica first revealed a partnership in April last year, and the airline now claims to be the first low-cost carrier in Europe to offer passengers high-speed, in-flight Wifi services.
The services have been made possible thanks to Eutelsat’s KA-SAT satellite, part of a group of high through-put (HTS) satellites in Europe, designed to offer in-flight Wifi speeds of 20Mbps.
HTS satellites utilise a large quantity of beams, each with a very small surface coverage, allowing power to be increased at each point of the beam, and frequencies able to be reused in a similar fashion to that of a mobile network.
This enables the satellite to have a bandwidth performance at least 70 times greater than a conventional satellite.
In July last year, Eutelsat partnered with ViaSat for roaming services between Europe and North America, designed to facilitate a number of services including in-flight connectivity.
