Inmarsat has launched GX+ North America as part of a strategic collaboration with Hughes Network Systems

GX+ North America is an aviation connectivity solution that has been specifically designed for North American commercial airlines. It claims to seamlessly integrate the capacity of the Hughes JUPITER High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) constellation across North America with Inmarsat’s Global Xpress (GX) HTS satellite network, bringing a unique combination of capacity, speed and reliability to the region.

The new solution underscores Inmarsat’s strategic vision as it looks past the pandemic and into the future needs of commercial airline fleets in North America.

The ultra-high capacity of GX+ North America will make it possible for North American airlines to meet increasing passenger demand, including the surge in traffic expected from free-of-charge inflight wifi.

GX+ North America offers full flexibility for route planning, even on short notice, as the solution can cover any route worldwide through the GX global network — whether to Hawaii, Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean, across the Gulf of Mexico, to Central and South America, across the Atlantic or even to the most extreme northern latitudes.

Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, said: “GX has firmly established itself as the reference inflight connectivity solution for today’s demanding passengers and is used by airlines worldwide. We are very confident that this game-changing collaboration with Hughes, combining their market-leading depth of capacity with Inmarsat’s award-winning passenger connectivity solution, uniquely delivers inflight broadband that is consistently superior regardless of the number of passengers using the service or where they are travelling.”

The new solution will be provided and managed end-to-end by Inmarsat. Prototype flights are expected to start later this year with commercial availability scheduled for 2021.