Gogo Inflight Internet

Gogo began in 1991 in a barbecue restaurant in Denison, Texas, where company founder Jimmy Ray sketched his idea for an affordable telephone system for private airplanes on a paper napkin. John D. Goeken of MCI and Airfone had already invented an automated air-to-ground telephone system in the 1970s, and in 1989, he founded In-Flight Phone Corporation as a competitor to GTE Airfone, serving many commercial airline passengers, but not supplying general aviation customers. Through a partnership with cellular providers, Gogo began as Aircell, providing analog-based voice communications on private aircraft in North America. By the late 1990s, Gogo had leveraged a satellite-based system to offer voice communication on overseas flights. The next step was to devise a way to bring in-air connectivity to a larger market. In 2006, Gogo was awarded the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's exclusive Air-To-Ground (ATG) 3 GHz broadband frequency license. In 2008, Gogo made their debut on commercial aircraft.

In June 2011, the company changed its name from Aircell to Gogo as part of a rebranding effort. Prior to the rebrand, Gogo's commercial air service was known as "Gogo Inflight Internet". In September 2014, Aircell rebranded as Gogo Business Aviation.

On June 20, 2013, Gogo announced that it priced its initial public offering of 11 million shares of common stock at $17 per share. Gogo's shares started trading June 21, 2013, on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol "GOGO".

In June 2015, the company moved its commercial headquarters to 111 North Canal Street in downtown Chicago. As of August 3, 2016, Gogo's had partnerships with 17 major commercial airlines and was installed on nearly 2,500 commercial aircraft and over 6,800 business aircraft. The company had over 1,000 employees. In addition to its Chicago headquarters, Gogo had facilities in Broomfield, CO, and various locations overseas.

In December 2020, the company announced that it had completed sale of its commercial aviation business to Intelsat for $400 million in cash and would focus exclusively on the business aviation market moving forward.

In late 2024, Gogo Business Aviation acquired Satcom Direct. The remaining company rebranded to Gogo.

From oldest to newest, below are the technologies that Gogo currently uses, has developed, or announced:

Air-to-ground

Gogo's air-to-ground (ATG) network is a cellular radio network (meaning that there is a hand-off when the aircraft moves between service areas) that has more than 200 towers in the continental U.S. and Canada. The ground stations consist of original Airfone air-ground phone relay stations and newer locations, using the 850 MHz ATG band. Unlike terrestrial cell sites, ATG ground stations project a directional signal up into the air where airplanes are, rather than downward, where terrestrial users are. However, the short wavelength used allows segmentation and other cellular technologies in the same way that terrestrial cellphone technology works. The aircraft communicates with the ground stations through an antenna installed on the underbelly of the fuselage. Equipment in the aircraft's avionics bay converts between proprietary Gogo protocols and standard Wi-Fi, which is distributed into the passenger cabin through multiple interior wireless access point nodes.

Gogo provides continuous coverage with minimal interruptions in speed, detected when passing from one cell tower signal to the next. Gogo's connection speed is approximately 500–600 kilobits per second for individual users for downloads and 300 kbit/s for uploads. Total bandwidth for all users on the flight is approximately 3 Mbit/s. Some users reported Speedtest.net benchmarks above 3 Mbit/s, while other users reported low results of 0.03 Mbit/s down and 0.27 up. In January 2015, David P. Reed reported that Gogo service exhibited multiple seconds of latency under load, due to bufferbloat.

ATG-4

Gogo's ATG-4 system is a backwards compatible improvement to the previous ATG system. Maximum total download bandwidth has increased from 3.1 Mbit/s to 9.8 Mbit/s. ATG-4 has been installed on at least 600 aircraft as of 2015. Gogo can upgrade planes from ATG to ATG-4 overnight.

Criticism of business model

It has been observed that Gogo practices a "roach motel"-type business model that makes it easy to sign up for service via automated means but requires interaction with a customer service representative to effect an immediate cancellation. However, service for next and future months may be cancelled via email. By making it easy to begin paying for service but requiring a recurring monthly subscription, even when a shorter term of service may be desired, Gogo makes it likely for infrequent flyers to be billed in subsequent months for a service they do not intend to use. In addition Gogo does not send monthly statements, so customers are not alerted to the recurring charges. The service does offer 1-hour and 24-hour passes that do not incur a recurring charge; however, this does not change the fact that even those limited-time services are significantly harder to stop than to initiate. Gogo claims that to "cancel service is as easy as signing up for it" and directs subscribers to engage in online chat, send email or call via telephone. In contrast, however, the sign-up process does not require human interaction.

Class-action lawsuit

In 2013, Gogo was the subject of a class-action lawsuit, for allegedly not mentioning recurring charges on their website, nor notifying customers that these recurring charges would be made. A New York federal judge, Jack Weinstein, ruled on April 8, 2015, that the suit (Berkson, et al. v. Gogo LLC, Case No. 14-CV-1199, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York) for claims that the company tricked consumers into signing up for automatic monthly renewal of Wi-Fi connections

was allowed to move forward. In an 83-page memorandum and order of the case, the judge wrote, "the average internet user would not have been informed... that he was binding himself to a sign-in-wrap" and that the wrap contract "does not support the venue and arbitration clauses relied upon by defendants." The case was settled with users receiving complimentary one-day passes to use on the service.