February 28, 2023 – Intelsat announced the successful completion of inflight testing of its new electronically steered array (ESA) antenna. This antenna enables global streaming-fast Wi-Fi service and is available to airlines around the world. Intelsat’s ESA is the only commercially available antenna in the aviation industry that can operate between low Earth orbit satellites and geostationary satellites. Announced in June 2022, the new antenna has been accumulating flight hours with Ball, Stellar Blu Solutions, Intelsat and OneWeb engineers validating antenna and network performance. In early 2023, Intelsat successfully demonstrated the new system to global airlines on the company’s Bombardier CRJ-700 regional jet outfitted with the new antenna and inflight Wi-Fi system. With peak inflight download speeds exceeding 275Mbps, airline customers were able to participate in live virtual meetings, stream media and stay connected without interruptions. By using the Intelsat and OneWeb satellite networks together, Intelsat can offer the benefits of LEO’s low latency along with the redundancy GEO provides to address network hotspots that LEO networks on their own cannot address. Whether aircraft are flying polar regions or over the most populated cities in the world, the ESA antenna will offer seamless coverage from takeoff to touchdown.