Great news out of Chicago this week: Gogo has received certification from the FAA to operate its 737-500 test aircraft with a new antenna on top. That might not seem like a huge deal but it is the first (of many) steps towards getting the company’s Ground to Orbit (“GTO”) product flying which should mean much faster data speeds for passengers on board. There is, of course, the very real chance that GTO will never really fly on any commercial planes but that’s OK because it would mean that Gogo has the 2Ku product, using two satellite links rather than one satellite and one terrestrial link, working instead and that would be similarly good news for travelers. It also requires a separate testing certificate from the FAA so at least the first several weeks of testing will be with the GTO configuration. Gogo expects to have that certification shortly and will add the second antenna to “Jimmy Ray” (that’s the name of the test plane) once the cert is received.
As for when it might be on a commercial aircraft, I’ve not heard anything official from the company but if the technology all works as it should either GTO or 2Ku could be on planes by the end of the year. That’s an aggressive timeline given the FAA requirements and sufficient testing to make sure it really, really works on the planes before they go out and start selling the kit, but it is possible. The company has already performed tests with the antenna setup, showing impressive 60Mbit data transfer rates. That still needs to be converted to a reliable airborne system, but the initial numbers are promising.
Beyond just the high speeds promised there are other reasons to be excited by this next phase in the evolution of the in-flight connectivity market. It represents a significant change in the way companies have traditionally looked at connectivity, using multiple data streams and newer technologies in the antennae. There are potentially significant benefits for travel in and through equatorial regions thanks to the Thinkom antenna design and its reduced skew angle issues, for example. Or the expected throughput improvements based on spectral efficiencies, essentially getting more bandwidth from the same “chunk” of radio frequencies on the same satellite versus competitors.
Read More: Gogo’s GTO connectivity to fly first as FAA greenlights testing
Being able to stream content from the cloud to individual users should become viable and maybe even affordable, for example. Or just having enough bandwidth to let 100+ passengers on a transcon flight all perform basic browsing without constantly fighting for a bit of the pipe. And because it uses Ku-band satellite connections that means coverage on nearly all commercial air routes from day one, though there are some concerns about total capacity to support high speed connections on full fleets initially.
All of it adds up to a better in flight experience for passengers. And also some very cool technological improvements in the industry. That that really does have me feeling a bit giddy about the whole situation.
Related Posts:
- Delta signs as Gogo’s largest 2Ku customer
- Two bumps, one hump: Gogo’s 2Ku aims for fastest global connectivity solution
- Gogo’s GTO: faster speeds, but still some limits
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