Every vertiport is, in network terms, a remote site that needs the same secure, resilient connectivity critical infrastructure operators have depended on for years.
The aircraft get the headlines, but it is the ground infrastructure (charging, battery management, CCTV, operational comms) that quietly determines whether eVTOL operations are safe, secure, and compliant.
The architecture that runs secure SCADA over Starlink for a solar farm is ready today for the eVTOL sector building out the ground side of advanced air mobility.
The advanced air mobility industry talks a lot about the aircraft. The headlines are about Joby, Archer, Beta, Vertical Aerospace, the certification milestones, the test flights, and the funding rounds. Less is said about what happens on the ground.
That is a gap worth closing now, because the ground side of eVTOL is where the practical, operational, and security challenges of this new industry will land first.
Vertiports Are Remote Sites
Strip away the futuristic branding and a vertiport is, in network terms, a remote site. It looks remarkably similar to the operational environments Netcelero has spent the last decade helping customers connect:
- Charging infrastructure pulling significant power and generating diagnostic data.
- Battery management systems with safety critical alerting.
- CCTV and physical access control covering aircraft, passenger areas, and ground equipment.
- Operational communications between ground crew, schedulers, and central operations.
- Weather sensors and environmental monitoring feeding flight decision making.
- HMI screens and ground support equipment that often need vendor remote access.
All of that data needs to move securely back to a central operations centre. In most launch locations it will not be moving over enterprise fibre. The first wave of vertiports will sit on rooftops, retrofitted heliports, brownfield industrial sites, and edge-of-city locations where fibre availability is poor or simply does not exist. The realistic connectivity options are 4G, 5G, and increasingly Starlink.
A Familiar Problem in a New Industry
If that sounds like the connectivity profile of a solar farm, a SCADA network, or a critical infrastructure site, that is because it is. The underlying problem set is virtually identical:
- A static, predictable public IP address is needed so the operations centre can reach the site, even though the underlying connection sits behind carrier NAT.
- Data needs to be encrypted end to end, not just from the carrier exit point onwards.
- The site cannot afford to be unreachable when one connection fails, so automatic failover and failback between primary and backup paths is essential.
- The various systems on site (safety critical operational systems, CCTV, vendor remote access, staff Wi-Fi) must be segmented so that a compromise in one cannot become a path into another.
- Public and operational subnets must be cleanly separated, with no port forwards exposing operational equipment to the open internet.
These are the exact problems Netcelero already solves for solar farm operators running SCADA over Starlink, for Alarm Receiving Centres monitoring CCTV across hundreds of sites on 4G, and for industrial operators connecting critical infrastructure that cannot tolerate being exposed.
Why This Matters Now for eVTOL
The eVTOL industry has a window of opportunity that most other sectors did not have.
Solar grew up before SCADA cyber security was widely taken seriously. CCTV grew up on the assumption that a port forward and a default password were good enough. Both industries are now spending considerable time and money retrofitting security into ground infrastructure that was never designed for it.
Advanced air mobility does not have to repeat that mistake.
The regulatory environment for eVTOL will be strict, and rightly so. FAA, EASA, and equivalent national authorities are unlikely to be lenient on the ground systems supporting certificated aircraft operations. Operators who design their ground network with secure, segmented, encrypted, resilient connectivity from day one will find compliance significantly easier than those who try to layer it on retrospectively.
What Netcelero Brings to the Vertiport
The same i-ctrl and Secure Link architecture that runs secure SCADA over Starlink for a solar farm in rural Spain is ready today for vertiport ground operations. That means:
- Static public IPv4 addresses on any underlying connection, including 4G, 5G, Starlink, and fibre. The vertiport is reachable on a fixed IP regardless of what is providing the bandwidth underneath.
- IPSec tunnels back to the operator’s data centre or operations centre, with end to end encryption from the site, not just from the carrier exit point.
- Automatic failover and failback between connections so the site stays reachable through outages, with no manual intervention.
- Network segmentation, including dual static IP configurations, for cleanly separating safety critical systems from CCTV, guest Wi-Fi, and other lower trust networks. The same approach we use today to separate SCADA and CCTV on solar farms.
- Centralised management, real time diagnostics, and automated firmware updates across the entire estate from a single portal.
- Dual European data centres in Dublin and Amsterdam, with our own IPv4 and IPv6 address space for stability and control.
No exposed ports. No reliance on the underlying carrier for security. No single point of failure.
Building for What Is Coming
The advanced air mobility industry is moving from prototypes and test flights toward commercial operations faster than most people outside it realise. Vertiports being designed today will be in service for decades. The connectivity decisions made in those designs will determine whether ground operations are secure, resilient, and easy to manage, or whether they become the weak link in an otherwise impressive system.
Netcelero already solves this problem for the industries that came before. We are ready to solve it for the industries that are coming next.
If you are working on the ground side of an eVTOL operation, a vertiport rollout, or an eVTOL test or manufacturing site, and you are thinking about how to keep it connected, secure, and compliant, we would welcome a conversation.
To discuss vertiport connectivity, eVTOL ground infrastructure, or any related deployment, contact the Netcelero team.
Image credit: NASA Advanced Air Mobility programme. Public domain.vertiport_CU_rev3
