[Avionics Today April 8, 2014] Japan Airlines is expected to be among the first airlines to try out a new Ground to Orbit (GTO) in-flight connectivity service, 2Ku, which Gogo says will deliver peak connectivity speeds of more than 70 Mbps.
Since first launching five years ago, Gogo, like its competitors, has been trying to increase its in-flight connectivity platform to mimic connectivity speeds that passengers are used to with office or home Wi-Fi connections. However, the average speeds on the majority of aircraft equipped with Gogo and other in-flight connectivity services are still much slower than those available on the ground.
"When we launched our in-flight Internet service five years ago, we were able to deliver peak speeds to the aircraft of 3.1 Mbps through our ATG network,” said said Michael Small, president and CEO of Gogo. "About a year ago, we began deployment of our next generation ATG-4 service, which took peak speeds to 9.8 Mbps. Our GTO solution takes the peak speed to 70 Mbps in the U.S. and 2Ku brings 70 Mbps to the rest of the world."
Anand Chari, Gogo’s chief technology officer (CTO), said that the company expects 2Ku to deliver speeds of more than 100 Mbps "when new spot beam satellite technologies become available."
The new service is scheduled to become available mid-2015.