Advanced Television

Gogo gets China approval

June 15, 2017

By Chris Forrester

Airline In-Flight connectivity supplier Gogo has received regulatory approval to operate over China.

The agreement means that Gogo-equipped aircraft can now supply Wi-Fi services to flights entering or passing over China. Currently, this means that Gogo’s main partner airline serving the region, Delta, can now start offering Gogo’s ‘next generation’ 2Ku inflight connectivity services on Chinese flights.

Gogo already provides Wi-Fi services to 17 airlines around the globe, including 13 which are committed to upgrading to its Gogo 2Ku services from the existing Ka-band services.

While existing Ka-band satellites are perfectly adequate technically to serve aircraft, the fact is that there are far more Ku-band satellites in orbit and this is especially true in terms of the world’s major aircraft hubs, such as Chicago, New York and London.

Gogo says that it has more satellite capacity dedicated to serving aviation than any of the Ka satellite providers today and will have more capacity for the foreseeable future.  “We have access to more than 50 Gbps of capacity today, we’ll up that to more than 100 Gbps in 2018 and we expect more than 10 Tbps in 2020 and beyond.  The Ka satellite providers share bandwidth with numerous other markets while Gogo dedicates capacity for the aero market.”

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