Access to internet is an expected facet of modern living; we want to be able to check our email, catch up on our TV shows, or listen to our Spotify playlists wherever we are. But there’s one location where our expectations for internet access fly out the window: while onboard an airplane.
More than 2.5 billion people fly every year, and a vast majority of them without any access to reliable internet service. According to a 2014 Honeywell study, almost half of airline passengers would go through security twice if it meant having Internet like they have on the ground.
Gogo, the largest i-flight internet service provider, is trying to make that dream a reality. Through its brand new 2Ku satellite technology, it’s bringing users not only inflight internet, but inflight internet that allows them to stream videos, use chat apps, and watch live video on Gogo TV.
If the Chicago-based Gogo has its way, eventually, the internet speeds and ease of access you expect on the ground will be the same as what you experience in the air.
“This is not the last technology. It will get us where we want to go, and it will buy us time to get to the next product. Just like there’s 3G, 4G and LTE,” said Ash ElDifrawi, Gogo Chief Commercial Officer. “We’re technology agnostic. At the end of the day, all we’re striving for is the most bandwidth at the best cost, with the most reliable network. That’s all we think about all the time.”
Air to Ground Runs Into Expectations
Gogo got its start, like most of these things do, on a cocktail napkin. Original founder Jimmy Ray sketched out an idea for an aircraft telephone system, and the company, then known as Aircell, launched an analog telephone system on planes. In 2007, Aircell was sent on its path towards becoming a broadband company, when it reached a partnership with American Airlines to provide broadband for some of its flights. A deal with Virgin followed, and in early 2008, Gogo In-flight Internet debuted and the company changed its name.
The original version of Gogo, which is still the most deployed version of the service, operates via an air-to-ground network run through the 3 MHz of spectrum Gogo purchased in 2006 and a network of towers and antennas.
There are obvious limitations on speed and network capabilities when trying to provide internet to an airplane, from the ground. The bandwidth on current Gogo flights is approximately 3 Mbps, with average speeds clocking in around 500 to 600 Kbps, which isn’t fast enough to stream video, or do much beyond some reading of the web and checking your email. This is likely why Gogo only captures about seven percent of users on its equipped flights.
Gogo’s current product appeals to business travelers more than the everyday user who’d like to use their iPhone to stream Netflix on their flight and expect the speeds they get on the ground. As such, Gogo will have to spend some resources educating its current customers about its current speeds and capabilities.
“We work hard at managing expectations for our customers. We’ve had to be more transparent than not; we have to tell people (with the current model) that they can’t do streaming, and communicate with them openly about what we can deliver currently,” ElDifrawi said. “We’re in a point where demand is outstripping supply.”
Going Up
The limitations of air-to-ground especially became a problem for Gogo, and for all airplane internet companies, when they want to start expanding into international flights. When you run out of ground, you run out of Air-to-Ground service.
“As demand for inflight internet goes up, you have people who don’t just want internet on flights from San Francisco to New York. People want inflight internet on flights from New York to London too,” said Tim Farrar of Telecom, Media & Finance Associates. “You can’t build a tower in the middle of the ocean to get that to work. So you have to go to satellite service if you want inflight internet internationally.”
This is where Gogo’s 2Ku satellite comes in. Instead of getting bandwidth from the ground, 2Ku uses a proprietary antenna on the top of planes that captures signal from a series of satellites around the world. Leveraging Intelsat and SES satellites, Gogo is able to achieve twice the spectral efficiency with Ku. Gogo currently relies on a network of 180 Ku-Band satellites though the company expects more heavy through-put satellites to come on line, especially once the next-generation of Ku satellites come into service in 2017.
Gogo isn’t the first player in the satellite broadband for airplanes space; Boeing’s Connexion launched and failed in the early 2000s, and ViaSat and Panasonic offer service similar to Gogo’s. However, no company has Gogo’s reach; it is responsible for around 70 percent of the internet currently on planes in North America.
Gogo also has its proprietary two-faced antennas, which instead of being pointed at a target satellite, create a beam that points in the direction of the satellite by mechanically rotating a series of plates. The antenna look like two pizza pans, but they deliver speeds much faster than Gogo’s current product. Gogo says that users can expect 70 Mbps of bandwidth per flight, and individual speeds of around 12 Mbps. When more satellites come online, and with increased improvement of the spot beam antenna system, Gogo says it can get to 100 Mbps soon.
That’s not as fast as what users can get on the ground, of course, but that is fast enough to stream music and stream videos. And ultimately, that might be all people are looking for.
“Speed tests are easy to manipulate and unreliable. All that we really care about is our product doing what people want it to do,” ElDifrawi said.
Putting Gogo to the Test
Gogo recently invited us to see if Gogo Inflight Internet could do what we wanted it to do. As part of a press event, we joined 40 other industry insiders aboard Gogo’s 737—the Jimmy Ray—to put the new 2Ku to the test. Gogo has been testing 2Ku all over the country, running video streaming on as many as 40 devices at once.
I started using my Kindle and my iPhone 6 during takeoff and I was able to stream music from Apple Music and watch Netflix with some expected problems with latency. After all, the signal has to travel from the plane to the satellite and back. Gogo’s new Gogo TV, which features live feeds from participating live TV partners, worked well, despite a lack of options; the only channel of two I watched had hockey on it. I had little to no luck running talk-based messaging apps like Google Hangouts, but iMessage—which runs over Wi-Fi—worked just like it does on the ground. But still, it was hard to be disappointed at the reality, even if it didn’t work perfectly: I was able to watch Wayne’s World in an airplane, listen to music, and text at the same time.
Gogo expects to start rolling out 2Ku by the end of the year, since it received the FAA approval it needed back in August. However, as of right now, only 550 aircraft across eight airline partners have adopted the 2Ku for deployment, so it might be a while before the service reaches a large number of consumers.
Gogo isn’t sure how much it will charge for 2Ku, though it expects its prices will be in line with what it currently charges, which is as much as $27 for a cross country flight or $5 for an hour of access. Given the improved experience of 2Ku, Gogo can probably expect more than seven percent of people on flights to try its product out.
