On 31 December 2021, Gogo Business Aviation completed construction of its seven-tower 5G testbed, on schedule and on budget. The seven sites will serve as a testbed for the company’s 150-tower nationwide network, with the towers located in both remote and populated locations in order to validate the network.
Additional sites will be completed at what Gogo describes as “a rapid pace” throughout the first half of 2022, keeping Gogo on track to launch 5G in the second half of 2022.
Gogo’s 5G network is expected to deliver ~25Mbps on average, with peak speeds in the 75-80Mbps range. The system has been designed to deliver high throughput with very low latency in order to meet the increasing demand for data-heavy interactive services such as video conferencing.
“I’m proud of our team for completing this major milestone,” said Dave Glenn, gogo’s senior vice president of customer operations. “We’ll now begin testing and fine-tuning our network performance, including tower-to-tower handoffs, range and coverage.”
In November 2021, Gogo announced that Duncan Aviation is working to complete the first-article Supplemental Type Certification (STC) for the onboard 5G system. Duncan will use the experience and data gained from certifying the first article to modify all of its full-equipment Gogo Avance L5 STCs to include Gogo 5G, covering more than 30 aircraft models.
Gogo also announced Jet Edge as its launch customer in October. “We’re seeing strong demand from our OEM and dealer partners for Gogo 5G,” Glenn added.
