Onboard connectivity provider Gogo (Booth 4040; Static AD_207) is celebrating at NBAA “Our 5G Network launch,” president Sergio Aguirre said, calling the rollout of what’s claimed as the first in-flight 5G service in North America “a tremendous achievement.”
“Despite Covid and the logistics and international trade issues, the team finished the design and deployment of 150 [tower] sites across the U.S. and outfitted two data centers, on time and on budget.”
Gogo noted that its 5G air-to-ground (ATG) system does not interfere with radar altimeters. The company has on static display a Gulfstream GIV-SP with a 5G system installation performed by Duncan Aviation.
But while the 5G network is up, it’s not yet running. The Colorado company announced earlier this year a supply chain holdup for the chip used in the aircraft hardware, delaying first shipments until sometime in mid-2023.
In the leadup to NBAA, in addition to 5G, Aguirre provided updates on Gogo’s forthcoming LEO satellite broadband service with OneWeb and its Avance L5 and L3 news.
But the focus is on the 5G service, and with “pent up demand” and the pieces now in place, “Once the shipsets are available, we can just open up the floodgates,” Aguirre said.
Dealers have orders for 5G systems in hand, and last year Gogo released the installation manual, allowing dealers and MROs “to review and plan” for the work. About 10 STCs for model-specific installations are in development by several facilities.
“Typically, they don’t do that until after the product has been in service for a few months and they start to evaluate demand,” Aguirre noted.
Duncan Aviation, which holds STCs for Gogo Avance L5 installations, is amending them to add the 5G antenna installation to the approvals. For customers with Avance L5 systems already onboard, the upgrade consists of replacing one of two multiband 13-inch antennas with a 5G antenna, and adding an X3 LRU to connect to the Avance module. Software updates manage the rest. That ease of upgrade is designed into the Avance L5 system and, Aguirre said, is the core of the product development strategy set in the year 2000.
“We wanted to make it easy to install, with less downtime, and easy to upgrade, giving aircraft the backbone architecture to add additional capacity and networks without a rip-and-replace strategy. Customers now see the value of that building-block strategy.”
Two undisclosed OEMs are “well underway” with designing installations for their jets, he said, also contrary to the typical post-service entry decision timeline for optional or line fit equipment offerings.
“Clearly customers that are going to buy aircraft are expressing their intent and desire to buy Gogo 5G, to the point where aircraft manufacturers are already working on their design installation.”
Just under 2,000 jets are equipped withAvance L5, and all of them “are very, very highly likely candidates for this installation,” Aguirre said, citing a relentlessly increasing appetite for bandwidth, such as a 33 percent year-over-year increase in megabyte consumption on its systems in the second quarter of this year. “This is not going to stop,” he said. “We see this trajectory going for more bandwidth requirements to the aircraft just increasing year over year.”
Meeting the demand is behind Gogo’s forthcoming global satellite broadband service, via OneWeb’s low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation, announced at EBACE this year.
The OneWeb LEO network is two-thirds in orbit and fully funded, but the Ukraine war disrupted the final satellite launch and system deployment, now slated roughly for the third quarter of 2024. Here, too, Avance L5 can be simply upgraded.
“The only thing you’ll have to do to upgrade to global broadband system is install the antenna,” Aguirre said. “No additional LRU is required—just upgrade the software.”
Pricing for global broadband, aimed at light to midsize jets, hasn’t been announced, but “both the hardware and the service will be a significant reduction from current geostationary systems,” he said. “A smaller form factor, faster speeds, and lower price.”
Gogo believes most customers will keep their current ATG service, even if they add global broadband, thereby enabling increased capacity and automated switching between networks for optimized performance or economy, configurable through the customer’s Gogo dashboard.
“When the owner of the aircraft is flying, they might use one configuration,” Aguirre said by way of example. “When [the operator] uses it for charter, they can change the configuration.”
Factory installations are expected to include connectivity to both its satellite and ATG networks, Aguirre said.
Demand for its entry-level Avance L3 ATG system has also been rising since Gogo last year reduced the minimum operating altitude from 10,000 to 3,000 feet, making it far more usable for turboprops and light jets on short flights. PlaneSense this year outfitted its all-Pilatus fleet with Avance L3 systems due to the lowered operating altitude, the fractional company has said.
But Gogo doesn’t expect much domestic uptake for global broadband at the light end of the market, particularly aboard owner-flown aircraft.
“Owner-operators don’t need high-speed access on the ground—they’re busy,” Aguirre said. “They quickly get above 3,000 feet, and then they have access to ATG.”
Meanwhile, for the first time at NBAA-BACE, Gogo is joined by a meaningful ATG competitor in SmartSky Networks, which had its long-delayed debut this year. (In late September, a U.S. District court denied a request from SmartSky for a preliminary injunction blocking Gogo’s 5G service, pending resolution of a patent infringement lawsuit.)
“What SmartSky is going to do for the industry, for our customers, and Gogo is actually quite positive,” said Aguirre. “It’s going to show the value proposition that Gogo brings to the equation. Right now people only have satellite-based systems to compare us to, and if SmartSky launches successfully, the customer base will have something to compare values. And I think Gogo will come out on top.”