An important feature of the Agile Sky service is our advanced-technology WiFi access control gateway.
When your service is delivered, this gateway is pre-configured with two distinct WiFi in-cabin networks, as described here.
There are two distinct and important reasons for providing these two separate networks.
The main Agile Sky Internet network:
- Prohibits access to the configuration controls for the Starlink satellite terminal (so that passengers cannot modify the operating state of the service)
- Limits download speeds, per passenger, to a nominal 3 Megabits per second
The management network, called Agile Sky Management, operates without either of these restrictions, offering the ability to view and adjust Starlink terminal settings, and also offering access to the full (typically over 200 megabits per second) native Starlink download data rate.
The reason for applying this default limit to the Starlink passenger network is simply economics.
The Starlink aviation plans have a 20 Gigabyte per month download quota. This quote can be consumed remarkably quickly at the full native Starlink data rates. For example, and somewhat ironically, performing an 'Internet Speed Test' consumes so much data that it takes only 2 to 3 such tests to download more than 1 Gigabyte of data.
This speed limitation also causes streaming video providers to down-shift to (typically) 'standard definition' video quality. This greatly reduces the bandwidth requirement for watching streaming video, with almost no change in passenger utility on handheld mobile device.
This download speed is entirely sufficient for two-way audio and video calling, and of course it is more than adequate for web browsing, iMessage, WhatsApp and Email (and similar) applications.