The Connected Skies: 5G, Predictive Maintenance, and the Future of Aviation

In this cutting-edge episode of Open Skies, Chris Glass is joined by William Cecil from FLYHT Aerospace and Max Le Leannec from Transatel for a deep dive into the evolving world of aviation connectivity. Together, they break down how legacy communication systems like ACARS are reaching their limits—and how private 5G networks, edge computing, and IoT-driven infrastructure are set to transform everything from engine data offload to predictive maintenance and real-time baggage handling.

The conversation covers why aviation has lagged behind industries like automotive in connectivity, and how global telecom innovation is now catching up to aircraft, gates, and terminals. From 5G private network deployments at airports like Charles de Gaulle and Hong Kong, to redundancy strategies for mission-critical systems, this episode explores how to future-proof the entire aviation data ecosystem. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to truly connect an aircraft—and an airport—this is your boarding pass to the future. 

Transcript

Introductory voice: 0:02

In today's aviation world, data is the new fuel flowing through every flight system and terminal. But what happens when the connection breaks?

Chris Glass: 0:12

Once every six months you hear of an airport losing internet access and it completely shutting down operations in a way that we've never seen before, because everything is so connected.

Introductory voice: 0:20

To fix it. Airlines are turning to smarter solutions like offloading data through new channels.

William Cecil: 0:26

There are ways to harvest engine data without using the ACAR system at all.

Introductory voice: 0:31

At the heart of it all, 5g, and the shift is already happening.

Max Le Leannec: 0:35

One of the trends that we see. Obviously is the rise of 5G private network one of the key elements for 5G deployment.

Introductory voice: 0:42

Airlines are flying blind through data congestion Legacy systems.

Max Le Leannec: 0:47

Vhf, hf are choking under pressure, but a new era is taking off All the A-cars are VHF and HF channels that were usually used for like under two kilobytes packets.

Introductory voice: 1:00

They are completely congested, from baggage handling to aircraft tablets. A connected ecosystem is redefining airport efficiency. From the ground to the clouds, the future is sinking in real time. This isn't just the next step in aviation. It's a new altitude, and in this podcast, you're about to witness it.

Chris Glass: 1:26

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Open Skies podcast. My name is Chris Glass, I am your host. I am with Willie from Flight Aerospace and Max from Transitel. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

William Cecil: 1:36

Thanks, chris, good to see you.

Max Le Leannec: 1:40

Hey.

Chris Glass: 1:40

Chris, thanks for having me on board. First of all, why don't we start out by getting to know you guys a little bit better? Max, you are the furthest away from me right now, so I'm going to kick it over to you, max why don't you tell me about yourself and your career with Transitel?

Max Le Leannec: 1:56

So yeah, to just basically introduce, my name is Max, I'm actually based in Paris, so pretty far away from Calgary, and I'm working for Transitel. We are part of the NTT group and we are an operator mobile operator providing worldwide connectivity, and we empower global aviation enterprises to collect data, send data, generate data and do basically a bunch of cool use cases that we're going to see later in the show.

Chris Glass: 2:25

Oh, fantastic, and Willy, what about yourself?

Max Le Leannec: 2:27

You've been a frequent guest on both shows.

Chris Glass: 2:29

So let's give the audience a little briefer on who you are again.

William Cecil: 2:34

Okay, so my name is Willy Cecil and I am a sales director at Flight Aerospace, where I'm responsible for our products in the aircraft data and connectivity space, and specifically our SATCOM 5G technology.

Chris Glass: 2:53

Fantastic, and I wanted to have you both on the show today to talk about where the industry is going, why connectivity is so important and how big data is going to change the space as we grow. So I think it's important to start off, Max, with you. Can you tell us a little bit about what Transatel is doing in this space and where you stand in the Internet of Things?

Max Le Leannec: 3:20

Okay. So yeah, transatel is a telecom operator. So we all know mobile local operator, like Rogers in Canada, at&t, verizon. So Transatel also has the full network component, network management. We have a core network, we have our billing, our invoicing, we have everything to run telecom services. But we are doing that on an MDNO model, which is we do not own, we do not deploy, we do not maintain radio access network. So that gives us the power to directly negotiate with local carrier and to do roaming on the services and we basically provide connectivity for global industries. That encompass avionics use cases, but also automotive use cases, industry 4.0. And on the IoT side of the ecosystem, we are more likely to be the connectivity provider. Iot is a vast ecosystem that encompasses sensors, devices, gateways, connectivity platform, analytics, and we are really dedicated to the connectivity aspect of that.

Chris Glass: 4:30

Fantastic, and you mentioned rail and automotive. I know the airline industry tends to lag behind when it comes to technology and when it comes to that, are those other sectors further ahead and what's going on in those sectors briefly, and then we could see how it relates back to the aerospace.

Max Le Leannec: 4:51

Well, you are kind of right, and this is especially the case for car OEMs. Connectivity is kind of being a commodity now but it's still super important and connectivity plays a critical aspect of operation for most industrials. Automotive and car EMs understood that a while ago and they tried to become completely sovereign and independent on the way they operate their telecom and data services, on the way they operate their telecom and data services and Translator plays a role in here, because we operate on the kind of MD&E model, so these guys can negotiate local agreement with our carrier and let Translator operate the telco services for them. So they have enabled a bunch of use cases that make them completely independent and they manage all the operations. They optimize all the security, data services and monetization and they took that step ahead compared to other industries such as aviation. That is kind of doing things. But yeah, you are right, and right away an automotive took a step further.

Chris Glass: 6:09

Yeah, it seems like you can get more information out of your car than you can a 737 or a Dreamliner. Willy, I got a question for you, so it's interesting to get to know Transitel. How did you get involved with Transitel and how do you get to know Max?

William Cecil: 6:26

Yeah, that's an interesting story. So it was actually during or coming out of COVID I was consulting in aviation and I saw a gap or an opportunity in the market where aircraft connectivity, which is my domain, that there really isn't a cost-effective, global, dependable service that essentially gives you like for a simple contract, you can connect with literally any airport in the world and not have to deal with switching price plans and switching providers and managing multiple SIMs. So a lot of the industry in aviation today, in the commercial aircraft side anyway, there's a lot of complexity associated with people using multiple sims, multiple insies, switching between different providers yeah, um, and to to manage the cost and get global connectivity and and anyway, that's how I came to meet max because, um, you know, I found out about transitel and what they do and it seemed to be the answer to that, um, that problem. So that was. It was really cool to meet Mac. So it's been probably four, four or five years now, I think. Yeah, completely.

Chris Glass: 7:53

So in my, in my previous roles with airlines, uh, the lack of information and the lack of connectivity uh made it very hard to run process improvement initiatives or to really own information coming off the aircraft. You were really flying blind in a lot of ways, and it seems like we're at a brand new time, a brand new era, I guess. How is that crossover between telecom and aviation really transforming the industry? And I'll leave it to both of you to answer will.

Max Le Leannec: 8:25

You have been here in the industry for way longer than me and the aviation side, so you're good to go first okay, yeah, sure, um, so yeah, like you know, I I think this is a trend that we're going to see more.

William Cecil: 8:40

But, um, the telecom industry, I'm going to talk more aircraft side and I'll let you talk more generally, max. But on the aircraft side, what telecom has meant for the last? I don't want to say since the 80s, so how many years is that? A long time Telecom with the aircraft has been.

William Cecil: 9:03

I referred to it before as like a telexlex system, but there's a system called ACARS that allows essentially text messaging back and forth from the aircraft over a over fairly narrow band pipe and that service is there's only a couple of providers in certain parts of the world. There's regional providers, but there's only a few providers providers in certain parts of the world. There's regional providers, but there's only a few providers. And and it uses a proprietary network and vhf towers and all kinds of things, um, and it is private and it's got security.

William Cecil: 9:34

You know, um, important uh aspects as supposed as associated with um service levels, like that's important for air traffic, um, air traffic control, data, com, um. But that, when I talk about telecom with the aircraft, that's what, even today, that's really what it means um, and then you know, in the last, let's say, 10 to 20 years there's been um an increasing growth in having a cellular connection to the aircraft, but that's been primarily restricted to downloading or automating the collection of a small set of data for flight safety analysis yeah but that's kind of where it's been and then going forward.

William Cecil: 10:17

The trend is, I think, there's going to be a lot more of, let's say, ip higher, higher bandwidth connection or ultra-high bandwidth connection on the ground and in the air too. In the last 10 years it's kind of become more and more common that you have internet systems on board.

Chris Glass: 10:34

Yeah and Max. What are you seeing when it comes to the industry trends with?

Max Le Leannec: 10:41

aviation. I'm going to take that from two angles, uh, the first one is obviously you have growing needs for seamless connectivity and that start for all the passengers. Obviously you have passenger expectation. They always want to get connected, connected on the go. Um, they see connectivity has a commodity now. Uh, so you get frustrated if you cannot get your phone connected right away after landing. So obviously having a modernized and a full powered connectivity is essential. And from the airlines or the airport they always seek for optimization.

Max Le Leannec: 11:20

You want real time data for predictive maintenance. You want to track your devices. Could be engines, could be trolley, could be anything that can block operation for a few minutes, few hours, but at the end it causes plenty of troubles. And you also have all the aircraft sensitive data. We mentioned obviously the ACARS data, but we have to keep in mind that when an aircraft is being released, it should remain in activity for like 20, 25 years and you have to make sure that it also has the same timeline as connectivity. For instance, an aircraft that has been released in late 1990s. So three generations of telecoms 3G, 4g, 5g, and all of them came with revolution. So obviously you cannot download all your aircraft data with floppy disk anymore. That makes no sense.

Chris Glass: 12:22

Right, but there are airlines trying to do that.

Max Le Leannec: 12:26

Yeah, yeah, completely right, floppy disk anymore. That make no sense, right? But there are airlines trying to do that.

William Cecil: 12:28

Yeah, yeah, completely all right now, uh, chris yeah, I might interject something there on the um. You know I I I've come up with a rule of thumb with what um max is talking about, because I I started out working with cellular uh avionics in the uh late 90s, early 2000s and it was kind of pioneering then to put a cell mode in inside an avionics box. But anyway, I have a rule of thumb about the generations right, and I think a general rule of thumb is each cellular generation is around for about 40 years and from its first inception and the first launch of the first network, of a technology, it's typically about 20 years later before the first network shut down. So there's a continuous growth till it reaches a peak and then there's 20 years of decline where they gradually shut down and then, within that time span, every 10 years roughly, there's a new technology. So after 10 years, 3g came out. Roughly 10 years after 3G, 4g comes out and then in 2020, late 2019, I think 2020, that's when 5G was launched and 2030 is when we expect 6G.

William Cecil: 13:42

So logically, 7g may be 2040. So there's a rule of thumb there. It's something like 40 years life. It's 20 years after launch before shutdown and there's 10 years between each generation launch. So right now we have four in the world 2G, 3g, 4g and 5G are all in service and at the end of this decade, I think, we'll switch to um. 2g will probably be completely gone around about 2030, but the first 6g will come out. So then we'll have 3g, 4g, 5g, 6g four technologies, and in some parts of the world they're more advanced where they switch off the old technology first, um, like this happened in the states. Uh, often they're the first to shut down 2G or 3G. They may be the first to shut down 4G too.

Chris Glass: 14:34

Now, willie, on previous shows and previous conversations we've talked about this, but I think it's worth exploring for this conversation. We're really coming to a head in how much data the traditional formats can actually handle. You know you've mentioned that ACARS is eventually going to be flooded I guess, for a better word with more information. Can you give our audience a little bit more on that, because I think it's going to be important for conversations to come up later on in this call.

William Cecil: 15:06

Sure, I mean ACARS is not going away in this call. Sure, I mean ACARS is not going away. It's what the airline industry or the aircraft is built around Right Especially for, like air traffic control management across the oceans and in airspace. In busy airspace it's what enables more efficient air traffic management and there's very specific regulatory aspects associated with it that I think that's going to be using ACARS for a long time. They might change the pipe that it uses. They talk about hyper-connected air traffic management where they might use commercial pipes like 5G or 4G or 6G and SATCOM internet connections.

William Cecil: 15:55

Those things could come. The reason that network, that ACARS network, is saturated is because of the expanded use of it for everything else for delivering flight plans to the aircraft, weather data to the aircraft for offloading, and this is actually the biggest one of all everything else for delivering flight plans to the aircraft, weather data to the aircraft for offloading, and this is actually the biggest one of all. Um, I think there's been more of a 10 and 10 times increase in traffic coming from the aircraft and it's almost all engine data from the new generation engines on your craft.

Max Le Leannec: 16:23

Yeah and so that's my hat. Yeah, you have all that legacy data in saturation, all the ACARS over VHF and HF channels that were usually used for under 2 kilobytes packets. They are completely congested and, like you mentioned, there is a prompt shifting to other type of connectivity. You might have airlines that are going over ACARS over IP that can use broadband links or other type of use cases that keep the safety-critical messaging work basically.

William Cecil: 17:07

So, like you mentioned, it's kind of important to mention that as well, right, yeah, the acars or telex side um, like I said, is going to be needed for for air traffic and the. The ways to fix it are um just to use, you know, ip connections like cellular 5g, 4g um instead of the vhf links, because it's specifically the VHF link. I think that's seeing the congestion around busy airports, so that's a big transition. The other thing is moving to, you know, the other solution is moving to other methods of handling the data. So there are ways to harvest engine data, for example, without using the ACAR system at all. That's one way to offload data is to just not use that whole mechanism on the aircraft and use another one and get it off the aircraft directly without loading or taking the load off of the whole ACAR system.

Chris Glass: 18:10

So, max, when we're talking about what Willie just said there finding alternate ways to get that information off, that needs infrastructure at airports, that needs a robust 5G network or a hybrid solution, if you will, can you talk about the rise of 5G and how that's changing airports, how that's changing how that information flows off the aircraft?

Max Le Leannec: 18:34

Yes, absolutely so. Obviously the aircraft are increasing their amount of data consumption, and that can spread across all the use cases inside the aircraft, from predictive maintenance, but also all the pilot cabin crew connectivity. They all get tablets for electronic flight back preparing their flight, monitoring what is going on inside the aircraft. Obviously, the data consumption is rising. That being said, most of the devices are Stellular compatible devices Stellular compatible devices, and Stellular is something that is robust, vastly deployed and you can rely on.

Max Le Leannec: 19:18

So whether it's on 4G or 5G doesn't make any difference. The important is is your performance well enough to make sure you are still on the go and not causing any outages and blocking. So 5G deployment helps all the integration to run smoothly. But we are seeing a couple of trends that are pretty cool on the airport side of the business. But we are seeing a couple of trends that are pretty cool on the airport side of the business, and one of the trends that we see obviously is the rise of 5G private network within the airport ecosystem, because they have a lot of use cases where airlines and people like you and I can benefit with and from on the all-value chain. We can see that later if required.

Chris Glass: 20:17

Yeah, I just think of all of the great tools that we were shown 15 years ago from all of these great providers that needed an internet connection. That just wasn't there around the facility. So you'd be like, hey, this is a great idea for a baggage scanner, but the information dies because he can't transmit it. So that's a really interesting development coming along and I think it's really going to help airport operations At least it would have in my previous life.

William Cecil: 20:43

Yeah, I think, um, uh, and maybe you could talk a little bit about it, max but an evolution that I've kind of witnessed from a distance is what happened in France with Charles de Gaulle I think I talked about this before, chris where Air France used they had Wi-Fi networks at the gates for the aircraft, so the aircraft data offload was done using Wi-Fi for the aircraft and so the aircraft data offload was done using wi-fi. And going back 20 years ago, the industry, the aviation industry, thought that what they called wi-fi gate link would be the future because it's free, um, but but setting up the services and a global service is a challenge, and so it never really transpired. But back then, um, air france was an airline using that for the A380 and maybe some other aircraft, but eventually that became cost prohibitive. They moved to cellular, I think with 3G.

William Cecil: 21:40

But even with 3G and 4G, I think the issue at Charles de Gaulle was it's so busy at peak times they can't get the service level they need Like you said, the crew with tablets service. They can't get the service level they need for for the like you said, the crew with tablets. They don't have enough that they can't guarantee the performance. So it's not dependable enough. And then that opened the door to the, the and I think transitel was involved in this when they introduced with the airport um, adp and um at uh, the airport authority, they introduced private 4G, so I think they were maybe a forerunner in doing this kind of stuff, the private networks that you're talking about.

Chris Glass: 22:16

Yeah. So what role do telecom companies like yourselves, like Transatel, play in that transformation, maybe at Charles de Gaulle or other airports, or in the space altogether?

Max Le Leannec: 22:31

yeah. So if you think about the customer journey of someone going to an airport, uh, everything is connected, but no one really sees that. So you are arriving to the airport either by a bus, shuttle or a car park. Everything is connected from the gate, from the CCTV, from the camera that has AI computer vision enabled. You have all the luggage cacher desk that are now completely automated. All this are connected and then you have all you know LoRaWAN sensor together, temperature, crowd management. All this needs to be monitored for safety reasons, for management reasons, and then, once your luggage has gone to the trolley, you need that computer vision to make sure luggage going to Paris is routed to Paris Aircraft. I need to make sure nothing blocks and therefore to stop operation. All this is connected.

Max Le Leannec: 23:38

This can be either cellular-based connectivity, and we provide multi-network SIM cards that are supposed always to connect to the best network available. This is the first level of quality of service and redundancy. But if you see lightning in the press in the news that you have major airports that are adopting private strategy, really you mentioned obviously Paris airports, or shoulder goals, or, early but no later than yesterday, hong Kong airports also announced the private deployment. You had Sofia last week a couple of the airport in the US, including Miami airport. You have Hamburger Airport, the oldest person, oldest guys. They are deploying private network because they see an increase into optimization, safety and performance In that completely isolated market. Trazotel is playing a role, like you mentioned earlier, and we provide a SIM card that can both access private network and public network seamlessly, which brings continuity of services for airlines or operator as well as a backup for the private network, and this is bringing redundancy and quality of service if required.

William Cecil: 24:56

And that is so important because, you know, once every six months you hear of an airport losing internet access and it completely shutting down operations in a way that we've never seen before, because everything is so connected you mentioned airports there, and just recent ones I saw there was sofia and uh, um and hong kong, I think the cargo terminal are deploying private, private 5g for operational purposes, um, others a couple and others I'll throw out I think there's.

William Cecil: 25:28

It's hard to keep track now. I think frankfurt is one, um, dallas, fort worth is another, uh, so it's kind of interesting that the airline um you know the, the benefit the airline will see from that, and I think what max talked about there, with the being able to support private and public, gives a kind of awesome combination because um, they can, they can use both um and, but the private may be limited to the main hubs or certain airports, but but aircraft fly all over. So they they want to be able to connect to every airport everywhere and and the commercial side gives you that kind of global footprint that, um you know you can use your private where you have it and then and then use the commercial on a global level.

Chris Glass: 26:16

Yeah, it gives you that flexibility that you need.

William Cecil: 26:19

Max, do you think that there will be a kind of private roaming alliance, where airports will get together and be a multi-airport private service, or maybe within Star Alliance or within airline alliances.

Max Le Leannec: 26:37

Well, I don't have any clue on this. That would be absolutely brilliant and a wise idea because obviously airport they can't assure the same client. That are airlines. So obviously you could have system integrator for airport that could say okay, we have a super nice technical stack, let's gather together to understand how we could bring value on the technical perspective, but on the monetization aspect as well. But I think there are too many players that need to be involved together to have something in this super short term. I'm thinking about already the technical stack from core vendor run vendor, but also the spectrum aspect of that. We need a proper harmonization if we really want to have something that is smooth. And then you have the devices themselves that need to access both private network A plus a private network B and still has the ability to run on public networks when no private are available. So it's a kind of hard equation to solve, but an exciting project to work on, I guess right is there?

William Cecil: 27:50

is there fundamentally any difference?

Chris Glass: 27:51

sorry, chris, I'm asking a question no, hey, uh, willie is my co-host today is.

William Cecil: 27:56

Is there any fundamental differences between you know what a private 5g network is versus a commercial 5G. Underneath is the radio access network technically the same. What's the difference between a private network and a public network?

Max Le Leannec: 28:11

Well, it depends on the authentication method. Obviously, when you use a SIM card for authenticating a private network, a public network and private network B needs to get authenticated on the network public network and private network B needs to get authenticated on the network. So you need to make sure all the EMZKI or PC, which are basically the information to access the network, are properly registered on the SIM card level and into the HSS levels. So that brings a question because if you have an aircraft that is not supposed to be registered on the network that tries to authenticate, obviously you can have some issues connecting to the network. And from commercials, who is operating and maintaining the private network at the airport level? Is that the airport itself? An airline that has its hub on the airport? You've got an ICP provider. All those guys have different economic mechanisms and they have different objectives. Obviously, from a technical perspective it's possible, but everyone needs to get aligned on the way they do the business together.

Chris Glass: 29:19

Now, when we're talking about that investment right, because that's a heck of an investment for an airport to make you have to pick the right network, I guess, to set up, right? You said that Charles de Gaulle originally started with 4G. Now everything's moving to 5G. How long is 5G going to be around, willie? You said 40 years was your rule of thumb, but um, I know with my cell phone we've already sunsetted a lot of the older uh networks. How long can we expect this investment to to stand tall?

William Cecil: 29:56

Well, maybe I'll answer that with our, with what I said earlier then a rule of thumb 40 years. Um, it was 2019, 2020. So I think we're in the 2060 timeframe.

Chris Glass: 30:08

Okay.

William Cecil: 30:08

Is for the life of 5g technology before the final shutdown happens. Um, but the minimum of minimum of 2040 before, uh, I think we for any, you know, before, um, I think 2040 is maybe when 6G might start to take, you know, might become the mainstream, the mainstream it seems funny to be talking about something 15 years away, but, um, it's, uh, it's good to actually be from an avionics perspective and aircraft connectivity. Uh, it's good to have those horizons because, like um, one of you mentioned earlier, the life of an aircraft is 20 years. So you have to deal with the technology changes and avionics retrofits and they can be cheap but they can be expensive.

Chris Glass: 30:57

Yeah, absolutely.

William Cecil: 30:58

I think I've said this before an aircraft's not like a building or an office where you can just send in a crew of people to go roll out new cables, install new hardware. Um, it's a flying asset that that they want to have in operation as close to 24 7 as possible and there's very little time for any work to be done on board to make changes yeah, I think that's.

Chris Glass: 31:21

That's such an understated uh comment. Uh, because you know, unlike other industries, you can't easily bring 200 aircraft back to your hub, switch everything out while running an operation, uh, and a global operation at that right like it's just not that easy. So you have to make sure you're making those right decisions when you, when you put stuff on the plane the first time. Now question for you guys when it comes to, uh, the connected airport, right, we've talked a bit about baggage scanners, you've Max, you were talking about, um, even the check-in counters, all the way down to, uh, the car parks, all being connected and all using the internet. Willie, is there going to be a time where airlines and the actual aircraft is as connected as the rest of the infrastructure at the airport?

William Cecil: 32:14

I think so, but in general, technology wise, the kind of consumer and IT world will always be a step ahead, right, and there'll always be something new. So, like you, have we talked about, you know, computer vision or like automatic detection of people and whatever. And there's even you know, I think one of the companies I've seen recently where they have cameras deployed at the gates, monitoring the gates and what's going on at the aircraft and having AI convert that into useful information. That could happen in the aircraft too, but there will always be a time lag between the aircraft and what's going on outside the aircraft.

Chris Glass: 33:03

And how do you think aircraft will access that private 5G network?

William Cecil: 33:08

Yeah, so Max talked about and they already are, I would imagine, with a lot of airlines the crew on board have devices, tablets or iPads or whatever and a lot of airlines have those, maybe are cellular enabled. So on board the aircraft those things might be connected through the cabin internet system or a lot of times they're not connected at all on board. But on the ground those devices, even though they're in the aircraft, are connecting to the networks that we're talking about where, depending on the application, having a dependable connection is important.

Chris Glass: 33:50

Now your company at Flight is on the cutting edge of that, with the AFERS Edge correct. We are indeed, so tell me a little bit how AFER's Edge interacts with a connected airport.

William Cecil: 34:06

So yeah, so the AFER's Edge is utilizing cellular technology. It supports three of the four generations that are available right now. It supports 5G and 4G and 3G, so it gives that life, we said, through between 2040 and 2060 timeframe, and it's the first product to market that enables support for 5G, but not just 5G, with the likes of Transatel, I think. The frequencies are essentially the same on private networks. So we have the capacity and we look forward to supporting connecting the aircraft to the private networks too, so, um, we can bring the dependability of the connection um to a new level, uh, with those private networks.

Chris Glass: 34:56

And when we're talking about uh dependability, max, you had mentioned a word that uh sounds relatively boring to most people, who aren't thinking of the worst case scenarios. But you mentioned redundancy, and redundancy is key to consistency. So can you talk a little bit about switching back and forth between private and public networks? Why is that important and why does that help the reliability?

Max Le Leannec: 35:22

And why does that help the reliability? If you think from an operation perspective, and if you are either an airline IT manager or an airport IT manager, what is the most important thing is you don't have any outages and you just want everything to run smoothly. Connectivity is commodity, but connectivity is crucial. It's critical when you are deploying your own private 5G into an airport. If you have a maintenance, if your private network is down, what happens? You have, I don't know 200,000 people that are flying daily in some airports and nobody can connect, nobody can download data, nobody can fly. So redundancy is key.

Max Le Leannec: 36:09

And how do you bring redundancy to? A private core? Network is okay. You can deploy a second core network and you have a complete shift over the second core. The first one is down, but deploying a private core is expensive and you need some dedicated team to maintain that. So one way of doing that is having a public network switch capability on top of the SIM card you are deploying and in case of a scenario of maintenance outages, you automatically switch all the scenes from private to public. Obviously it's like temporary, but it brings plenty of flexibility for a fraction of the cost. And this is what we are doing today with a couple of airlines and this is proved and pre-efficient way of bringing like redund Is that automatic the switchover, or does the user have to get involved in the private-to-public switch?

William Cecil: 37:09

or is it fully automatic?

Max Le Leannec: 37:11

Well, it depends on the use case. If you consider an airline that is flying all over the world, you just want it to get seamless and automatic. So when the private network is no longer available and you land into another place, the SIM is a slave of the modem. You're just going to scan the network and connect to the public one. If you take the example of a ground maintenance worker that never leaves the private network but always connect to the private one, you have two scenarios. The first one is oh, private network is completely unavailable, I automatically switch, based on communication between the SIM, the modem and the network, and trigger the automatic switch. Or you have something that is a bit more controlled. It can be an IT team saying okay, okay, we're going to prepare our maintenance for tomorrow 5 pm, so we're going to automatically provision the SIM to connect at 4 pm and a few seconds to connect to public. So you have a choice.

Chris Glass: 38:15

the idea is to be independent and to get whatever suits you best so, talking about 5G telecom, talking about where we are right now, you were at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. How was that this year?

Max Le Leannec: 38:30

That was pretty cool. Mobile World Congress is heading towards more a technical and tech trade show rather than pure telecom, which is great, and you see more and more industrial use cases being displayed. Uh, and I really use, because telecom is like something you can't touch. You have to rely on the partner you are working with to display some cool initiatives. So, right, um, there are more and more innovations being displayed. This is is insane. This is cool.

Chris Glass: 39:02

That's great. Now, as part of the MWC well, that's an acronym that's going to be hard to roll off your tongue was a Smart Airport Summit and that, to me those words going together, smart airports has been a long time coming. So talk to me about the Smart Airport Summit smart airports has been a long time coming.

Max Le Leannec: 39:26

So talk to me about the smart airport summit there. Yes, this is a second time I think the smart airport summit is being held during mwc. First time was in vegas. I couldn't attend, but yeah, basically you have a couple of people involved in the industry that is, uh, that are displaying what they are doing. So there were the Miami Airport manager that displayed what they are doing through Private 5G. Lufthansa technical Private 5G integrator were also being part of that. Airbus also on the new connected aircraft, displayed what is going on on their OEM side of the business and everything through scaling private 5G, private hybrid network, the satellite integration into the connectivity services as well. So it was a great experience, though I think they want to do that again in Vegas and for next year's edition as well.

Chris Glass: 40:24

Yeah, it's great to see that we're finally tackling some of those issues that have been such longstanding thorns in the operations side.

William Cecil: 40:34

Yeah, I see that conference, Like you said, I think the first one was in 2024 in Las Vegas, and then they had the one in Barcelona this spring and then I think, in the fall I think they're having another Smart Aviation Summit at the Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas. So that's really cool to see what's going on. One thing about that conference, though, max, I was wondering is are they talking about connectivity with the aircraft or is it mostly around the operation ground operations, you know, with maintenance and baggage handling and you know all the operational use cases that are at the airport? Are they focused more in that space or are they talking about the aircraft itself?

Max Le Leannec: 41:21

No, it's basically a comparative thing that you said. From innovative use cases inside the airport. It can be anything from Loja 1 network enabling basic use cases such as health maintenance, sanitary devices, handlers, everything that are basic and also coupled with a bit more technical use cases like computer vision, AI-enabled supervision, aircraft, obviously, data, everything related to the passengers as well. So one of the trends that we saw during that year edition is all around the eSIM program. So most of the airlines are now embracing an eSIM affiliate program, because it's pretty understandable.

Max Le Leannec: 42:15

Airlines need to generate ancillary revenues from the customer base they have and when you have a massive airline that is traveling millions of passengers everywhere in the world, they can't generate a massive amount of additional revenue just by only reselling eSIM. And this is one of the initiatives that Transatel is also doing with our B2C brand called UBG, and we are enabling airlines to resell connectivity to their massive customer base and in action they can get either a refugia or a complete integrated product. So that was another key trend and obviously everything related to new type of connectivity. So private network for airlines, monetization, non-terrestrial network, integration within the connectivity stack of an airline and another airport manager.

William Cecil: 43:15

Are you saying, when you go to, when you travel internationally, some people, you see stores at the airport where you can buy another SIM and, like you said, sometimes it's eSIM, but you have to go to a counter and deal with somebody face-to-face to get a local SIM when you're traveling international, if you want to do that, are you saying that that could become more frictionless when you move from one country to another another? That you can just sign up on the fly for an e-sim switch for, yeah, while you're traveling?

Max Le Leannec: 43:48

completely. Uh wow, e-sim is now becoming a commodity, obviously, and while traveling around, you just don't want to pay like expensive roaming fees, you just want to have connectivity. But you expect to get that like seamless, easy to integrate and cheap. So obviously, just install an eSIM on your device. Now all devices are pretty much eSIM compatible. You download an eSIM before your travel, you buy your bundles and just when you land, your eSIM is already activated and you don't have to deal with the logistics. You travel for like 18 hours. You're completely exhausted and then you have to negotiate for your eSIM card in the local language. That is pretty exhausting. So, yeah, it's a commodity, but it's super great.

Max Le Leannec: 44:38

So this is basic for you and our traveling around, but you can even take that a step further. Now you go to your ticketing platform online and you buy your flight from the US to Paris. Now your airline is going to say hey, willy, I've seen that you booked the flight with us. That's pretty cool, but while you are traveling to Paris, why don't you enjoy a connectivity on the go? So we give you access to 10-20% off on your data plan using our partner or our integrated connectivity, and based on that, you're going to have additional further discounts and incentive with our loyalty program. So this is a new way for airlines to generate that loyalty program and it's, it's, it's a wise plan, see it's interesting you mentioned about the cost of roaming, because it can.

William Cecil: 45:33

I think there's a lot of elasticity on what people they can price the networks can charge for when when roaming happens, and it can be all the way from really expensive. You know people have massive thousand, thousands of dollars phone doll when they don't realize. It can be all the way from really expensive. You know people have massive thousands of dollars phone bill when they don't realize and they're on the high price side. And then the other end of the spectrum, like we're using on the industrial IoT side with our A4Z product, where it's literally it can be as cheap, as a couple of you know, to a few dollars, a few dollars a gigabyte, but then you could pay a fortune. If you're for the consumer anyway, the consumer could pay a fortune, a really expensive end up with an expensive bill.

Chris Glass: 46:12

Max, I love what you just said about having an airline offer that as an option. There's so many times that airlines are offering to get you to pay for something that you don't want to pay for, like luggage or food. I've always found connectivity is something people are willing to pay for. They want the connectivity, they want the latency to be there and they're willing to pay a premium for it.

Chris Glass: 46:36

So that's a really cool novel approach to the business there yeah, completely, completely now, just as we're getting to the end of the podcast today, I I want to talk about some of the challenges that are coming up. So one of the big challenges was getting 5g uh set up, and we're well, well on that path to it becoming the adopted standard across the uh, across the the globe. What's next? What's the next big challenges that we need to tackle in this space?

Max Le Leannec: 47:14

It's a great question. From my perspective, I see four or five challenges that need to be answered ASAP. The first one is obviously scaling all the private to public or hybrid network. They're extending most of the products that are proof of concept. So I think, extending these pilots to global airports, airlines and to make a real concrete monetization out of that business, I think that's going to open a lot of perspective. The second is creating the hybrid network.

Max Le Leannec: 47:51

There is a new 3GPP release 17 that's going to promote the non-terrestrial network integration where you're going to have an organized authentication method from cellular network and satellite based stations.

Max Le Leannec: 48:07

So the idea is to get, yeah, multi-orbit, satcom plus earth to ground communication, private 5G and you get all this type of network orchestrated with intelligent modems that could switch links, switch connectivity types based on latency, cost, whatever seems the most appropriate. And I think there are still regulatory frameworks like regulation issues. You have global standard that needs to be approved, global spectrum allocation and harmonization that needs to be okay. I still see some airlines that are not using the 5G network, despite having private 5G and 5G devices, because there are no consensus between the OEM, the telco provider and the local flight regulations saying there is no constraint to deploy a 5G device inside an aircraft for safety reasons. So I think they all have to sit down together to say, okay, you are free to go. On the airline perspective, anyway, a person that is flying into your aircraft anytime and as soon as he gets into the country he's landing, he's connecting his 5G devices onto the network. So no problem, you can go and provide the 5G devices and 5G services inside your stack.

Chris Glass: 49:39

Now, Willy, one of the big challenges I see is handling big data and data harvesting that quantity of data. So can you talk about a little bit about that challenge and where you see that going?

William Cecil: 49:57

Yeah, I think we've mostly been talking about connecting aircraft at uh, at the airport um, with aircraft on a on a turnaround. Were the aircraft on a turnaround? But I think the challenge that goes along with that is what's integrated? So the integration side, what's connected on the aircraft side. So what analysis is done on board, what data management is done on board before data is transmitted? Because we talked about the data volumes actually generated are huge, um, and even even with 5g it may not make sense for everything to be transferred. So, you know, edge technology, where computing at the edge um is, is something that that hasn't.

William Cecil: 50:43

You know, it's kind of done on a small scale really, um yeah you know, with the telex technology I'll talk with a cars that we're talking about earlier um, but kind of like the, the true edge technology that you see probably in automotive and other industries, um, integration of that kind of stuff and then, like you said, the automatic automated data harvesting, expanding that um for for things like predictive maintenance and and I think we're going to get into 5G and what that means for predictive maintenance, maybe in another podcast. But the other thing too is the integration that with what Max brought up with there's 5G and other non-terrestrial networks where, from an aircraft and airline operational perspective, that having a truly broadband, you know, dependable IP connection throughout the flight as well as at the airport is going to be a key thing and there's challenges, obviously to get to that point.

Chris Glass: 51:46

Max, one other question for you, One thing that we haven't talked about. We've talked about 5G, we've talked about traditional terrestrial systems. How does satellite networks fit into this?

Max Le Leannec: 52:00

How does satellite networks fit?

Chris Glass: 52:01

into this Like. I'm seeing Starlink getting more integrated with the aircraft and that kind of thing. How does that fit into the ecosystem?

Max Le Leannec: 52:13

I'm not an expert in the SATCOM, to be honest, but today there are more airline signing partnerships with Starlink OneWeb. Powering Connectivity while traveling in the air powering connectivity while traveling in the air. Today there is an initiative led by the 3GPP standard release 17, that promotes the harmonization between authentication from satellite and cellular. The idea is to use the satellite network as the same authentication as a cellular radio antenna, and that's going to bring perspectives because you can have an integrated services across all types of protocols satellite, primary, 5g, regular cellular network and this is going to enable a lot of changes in the way airlines work.

Chris Glass: 53:11

Right.

William Cecil: 53:12

Excellent.

William Cecil: 53:14

I was on a flight recently Actually it was back in January where on the iPhone it gives you a feature where you can see a lot of people probably see this when they have their phones on in flight that you see a little satellite symbol on the corner.

William Cecil: 53:30

So let you, unless you see that your phone's picking up starlink, uh or or some non-terrestrial cellular link, um and I I think they they offer this. It seems that you can um connect, use the find my app and, and I brought the find my app and I was connected with my phone through the window and I could see, you know, uh, with the, the ground underneath you know, on the map lay and find my and and I and I could see us whizzing across you know 500 miles an hour whizzing across the ground on the av, and that data is obviously flowing through right. It's flowing through the Starlink network. So that was kind of pretty. I tried to get it back and do it again, but I think I was just lucky that I managed to bring that up. I thought it was so cool that I was getting kind of like real-time tracking on my phone via Starlink. It was pretty funny.

Chris Glass: 54:24

Now, Max, I'm going to go to you for the last word here. What's the future hold for TravZTel? What's the next steps for you guys?

Max Le Leannec: 54:32

So we have to keep deploying the couple of big projects we are working on, deploying, obviously, the latest 5G component from 5G standalone and open that to our client. We have also a cool project going on in Brazil where we are becoming a full MVNO in Brazil and that's going to open a lot of perspective because that tackles the local regulation issues that you have in some countries. And becoming a global player in Brazil and local player with our own country code enabled us to have a nice base for all the LATAM region and we're going to enable cool use cases there as well. And I think we have still some work to do in the integration that we are being part of within the Entity Group. There has been no entity has been acquiring Transatel for the past six years and Entity is a global powerhouse. That gave us a lot of power into the technical and financial backup and that enables us to win big and nice clients. So we have to keep it up on that perspective and increase the relationship we have within all the NTT entities.

Chris Glass: 56:00

Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me today, Max and Willy, it's always good to see you again, my friend.

Max Le Leannec: 56:07

Thanks Chris, Thanks Chris, See you later.

Chris Glass: 56:09

And thank you for joining us on the open skies podcast. We're going to have many great episodes coming up in the future, so please tune in and follow along.