Altobridge, a small technology firm based in the Kerry technology park in Tralee is playing a key role in the development of the technology systems that are needed to enable mobile phones to be used onboard aircraft. Technology reporter Jamie Smyth reports.
The firm, which counts the former Labour Party leader, Mr Dick Spring, among its directors, supplied the software gateway that enabled the first commercially viable inflight mobile call, which was made in August - a full month before Airbus's recent test call using a rival's technology.
The Altobridge call, which was made on a business jet flying over the Pacific by Kerryman Mr Mike Godley and Corkman Mr Richard Lord - both of whom work for the firm - used Altobridge's core technology, the AM Gateway Platform. This software product enables a special mobile base station installed aboard an aeroplane to link via satellite with a land-based mobile base station to connect passenger mobile calls.
"The key to our technology is that it enables remote wireless communications without the requirement for a permanent satellite communications link, which is prohibitively expensive," says Mr Mike Fitzgerald, a former Ericsson engineer that has spent the past three years at Altobridge perfecting the technology.
"It makes use of existing satellite capability, operating over Inmarsat equipment, which is already in use on thousands of the world's passenger aircraft. This means that airlines do not have to replace any of their existing technology systems."
Altobridge's technology works with GSM mobile phones, which connect to a small "picocell" system located in the cabin to enable passengers to use their mobile phones in flight just as they do on the ground. The system activates the satellite link with the ground only when a passenger receives or makes a call.
"The concept is simple: It is just too expensive to put base stations in remote places," says Mr Fitzgerald, who founded Altobridge in 2001 with Mr Guy Waugh, both of whom had worked for Microcellular Systems, an Irish company that was bought out by a US firm Interwave Communications in 2000.
Altobridge's technology is initially making waves in the airline industry but it is also applicable in the maritime industry and for remote land-based base stations.
"Just think of the tens of thousands of villages in China that have no connection to GSM networks because they offer no return on investment for mobile phone operators," he says. " Governments are mandating access in rural areas in countries and the problem of access will have to be addressed by industry."
Financed from management's own resources and the State agency, Shannon Development, Altobridge has spent three years developing software that enables communications over distances by using satellite and mobile phone base-station technology.
"We spent a long time making sure we could develop something that offered true novelty value and could get patent protection," says Mr Fitzgerald. "We first deployed a system on a cruise ship and realised that you don't have to keep a satellite link up and running 24 hours a day but only when a call is actually being made. This is the way we can offer mobile communications in a cost-effective manner."
Altobridge has registered four patents to protect its technology and this quarter it produced its first $225,000 in revenue from Telenor and Arinc, who have licensed its core technology. The two firms are demonstrating it this week at the World Airline Entertainment Association's 2004 conference in Seattle.
Mr Graham Lake, the European managing director of Arinc, a firm specialising in transportation communications, said last week that Arinc and Telenor had made a major breakthrough in communicating the complex protocols over the Inmarsat SATCOM.
"We accomplished this feat with newly-developed proprietary software. Ground tests were completed this month in Ireland, with multiple simultaneous calls placed successfully through the satellite," he said.
The two firms Telenor and Arinc will now attempt to sign up as many airlines as possible to install the technology, as a means to boost their revenues by taking a cut of all mobile call traffic.
But, for Altobridge, airlines are only the first target. It is a litmus test that will enable the firm to spread its software to yachts, cruise ships and container ships. It will also pursue opportunities for the deployment of the software in remote areas, according to Mr Fitzgerald.
