Aug 22, 2002 12:00 PM,

Matsushita Avion commits to GRIC’s wireless vision

Jim Barthold

Matsushita Avion Systems, the world’s largest supplier of in-flight entertainment systems, will be using the airwaves to keep its employees connected--albeit not necessarily entertained--while traveling or working from home through a deal with GRIC Communications.

More on this Topic

Industry News

Blogs

Briefing Room

MAS’ worldwide work force will have access to GRIC MobileOffice, a worldwide data network that provides secure remote Internet access for mobile employees. GRIC’s gear also works with the MAS VPN to ensure that remote workers have a secure tunnel back to the corporate network and access to company data.

GRIC has about 19,000 dial-up access points and 460-plus wireless access points in 152 countries, through alliance members that are either telco ISPs, wireless ISPs or others. It brings together the ability to roam among other networks and get authenticated use on those networks.

“In this day when mobility is very critical to everybody, we took some measures in trying to provide different types of access methods through wireless broadband and GPRS and other things that would be addressed through our client on your laptop,” said Bharat Dave, GRIC’s president and CEO.

GRIC--which stands for Global Roaming Internet Connectivity--also integrated a number of security measures that can be set one time and invoked automatically when security tunnels are ready.

As technologies such as GSM become more reliable and widespread, GRIC will incorporate them into its offering, Dave said. It already works with 802.11 fixed broadband wireless “where there are a bunch of wireless ISPs all over the world putting together a few hotspots,” Dave said.

GRIC’s wireless network includes 470 points of presence in 11 countries, he said. That could expand as more capabilities become available.

“The user would like to have access that doesn’t break off,” Dave said. “If I’m in the building or within 100 feet of the 802.11 access point, great, drop me through there. But if I happen to walk away, don’t drop my connection, put me through cellular if you have to.”