Gogo Business Aviation announced that it completed construction of its seven-tower 5G testbed by the end of December, the company said in a release.
“These seven sites will serve as a testbed for our 150-tower nationwide network,” said Mike Rupert, vice president of network operations for Gogo Business Aviation. “The testbed includes sites in both remote and populated locations in order to validate the network is operating as designed in all types of environments.”
Gogo, which provides connectivity to aircraft using either satellite or air-to-ground capabilities, said that additional sites will be completed throughout the first half of 2022. Gogo also confirmed that the firm remains on track to launch 5G in the second half of this year.
Gogo 5G is expected to deliver approximately 25 Mbps on average with peak speeds in the 75-80 Mbps range and has been designed to deliver high throughput with very low latency to address the increasing demand for data-heavy interactive services like video conferencing.
Dave Glenn, senior vice president of customer operations, at Gogo, said: “We’ll now begin testing and finetuning our network performance, including tower-to-tower handoffs, range, and coverage.”
In November, 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 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 had also announced Jet Edge as its 5G launch customer in October. Jet Edge has AVANCE L5 installed across the majority of its managed, large-cabin fleet and will upgrade 50 of those aircraft to Gogo 5G over a 24-month period.
“We’re seeing strong demand from our OEM and dealer partners for Gogo 5G,” Glenn added. “And we are confident that our customers will be delighted by its performance.”
Gogo is a provider of broadband connectivity services to the business aviation market. The company also offers “smart cabin systems” for highly integrated connectivity, inflight entertainment and voice solutions. Gogo says its products and services are installed on thousands of business aircraft of all sizes and mission types from turboprops to the largest global jets, and are utilized by the largest fractional ownership operators, charter operators, corporate flight departments and individuals.
As of September, 2021, Gogo reported 2,237 business aircraft flying with Gogo’s AVANCE L5 or L3 system installed, 6,154 aircraft flying with its Air-to-Ground (ATG) systems onboard, and 4,542 aircraft with narrowband satellite connectivity installed.
