Originally Posted by
Roger Greendeck
Between CPDLC, TCAS, and air to air VHF you'd think there are enough ways to communicate to allow safe 5nm spacing in oceanic airspace if the ADS-B coverage works. Crossing traffic would be more of an issue but aircraft on the same route should be fine if assigned a Mach number rather than allowing slight variations as happens now.
The ADS-B capability is in a hosted payload on Iridium Next satellites which are primarily a fully global communications network. So every aircraft that can be seen by Iridium hosted payload could have one or more broadband comms links including voice comms.
Welcome to the brave new world of ubiquitous communications