The European Aviation Network (EAN) is a unique, award-winning inflight broadband solution that has been developed and delivered by Inmarsat and Deutsche Telekom (DT) in partnership with leading European companies such as Thales, Nokia, Airbus and EAD Aerospace.
The first-of-its-kind solution combines dedicated satellite coverage with an integrated 4G LTE ground network to offer the fastest speed, highest capacity, lowest latency and most comprehensive coverage of any inflight broadband solution over Europe and adjacent seas.
The two components work in unison across land and sea, without any drop-outs or hand-offs, ensuring a consistent best-in-class passenger experience.
Designed to meet the specific needs of European aviation, with its high-traffic flight paths and busy airport hubs, this fully-integrated network combines ample capacity for European demand with ubiquitous coverage.
EAN’s small, lightweight antennas are ideal for the smaller aircraft that dominate Europe’s skies and need to manoeuvre frequently on shorter routes. It truly is the inflight broadband solution built for speed by Europe and for Europe.
Millions of passengers flying with International Airlines Group (IAG) carriers, including British Airways, Vueling and Iberia, have been able to access EAN and enjoy an inflight broadband experience like no other, with up to 100Mbps in speed to the aircraft.
Whether a passenger wants to stream, game, download or stay updated with weather and journey progress, EAN delivers uninterrupted connectivity in the air, just like they have on the ground.
And to prove just how fast, smooth and valuable EAN’s service is, leading aviation analyst Alex Macheras took up a challenge to upgrade every aspect of his trip to Barcelona, using only the onboard Wi-Fi, powered by EAN, on his Vueling flight to the Spanish city.
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In addition to providing unparalleled bandwidth and latency that meets the constantly increasing expectations of data-hungry passengers, EAN also offers airlines the fastest installation time. In fact, EAN’s small, lightweight equipment takes just seven hours to install, resulting in aircraft spending 80% less time on the ground than with satcom-only solutions.
EAN has continued to break usage records amongst passengers, which signals growing demand for a premium connectivity experience, even as European air traffic volumes recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. This trend is expected to continue in the future and the incredible scalability of EAN means it can easily keep pace.
Offering quick and cost-effective increases in capacity, EAN can add new towers or terminals to increase capacity within months rather than years. Each mast has three sectors to provide added capacity to an area through sectorisation (multiplying the number of sites in the same area), densification (increasing the number of sectors per mast), or a mix of both.
EAN’s onboard equipment is cheaper, lighter and low-drag, meaning it has three times less fuel impact than other systems, providing significant operational savings. In fact, EAN has the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) in Europe, which means airlines can achieve a return on their investment faster.
In addition, EAN’s reliable, high-speed service is the ideal platform for service innovations to generate new ancillary revenues, such as paid access with higher take-up rates, advertising, sponsorship, e-commerce and premium content.
Operational savings are not to be underestimated either, as real-time data access will contribute to driving cost and performance efficiencies that are estimated to be worth billions to the industry annually, as it regains strength. Airlines will be able to save money through delay reduction, fuel efficiency, diversion management, predictive maintenance and crew applications. These efficiencies could also result in a significant reduction of CO2 emissions in the future.
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