Trends and Opportunities
Most passengers want to be connected regularly during their journey whenever they are on airplanes, railways, subways, buses, ferry, cruises to check email, get directions, check hotel and restaurant reviews, upload photos, update social media, and stay in touch with those back home.
Wi-Fi is commonly used to provide internet connectivity.
In the case of venues or locations where internet connectivity provides by non-fixed means such as satellite or cellular connections, authenticating users on remote servers may not be possible. Certain backhaul provision has more limited bandwidth and higher latency and contention than fixed connections creating more challenges to network and service providers.
Business Benefits
WBA has published “In-Flight Wi-Fi Connectivity: Improving Passenger Experience, Engagement and Uptake,” report that explores how airlines, service providers and other stakeholders can make it faster and easier for travelers to get and stay connected onboard aircraft.
With the adoption of Passpoint® and OpenRoaming™, WBA develop industry guidelines for users’ digital experience when using Wi-Fi networks.
This ultimately will unleash a consistent experience with non-fixed backhaul across aviation, railway and maritime sectors and provides an integrated and consistent mechanism that will be trialed initially in real-world scenarios, and create the standard for commercial rollout.
Expected Deliverables
- Provide industry guidelines and best practices for network providers transit operators, airline operators, and transportation companies to provide automatic, secure network access to users whenever the backhaul may be transient and improve the digital experience in Wi-Fi networks with non-fixed backhaul.
- Assess the options to provide a better user experience.
- Identify equipment, software and notification methods to users in the situation of transition between backhaul connections with transparent user experiences.
