Gogo Business Aviation 5G chip passes critical design review

Gogo Business Aviation has announced a key milestone in the development of its Gogo 5G service, which the company is aiming to launch commercially in the fourth quarter of 2023. The chip needed for the service to go live has passed a critical design review and is now in fabrication, with delivery expected mid-year, according to Gogo.

The first-article Supplemental Type Certification (STC) for the 5G belly-mounted MB13 antennas and the X3 (5G) LRU have been completed. That STC will be amended once the 5G chip becomes available.

This stage follows the completed construction of Gogo’s nationwide, 150-site 5G network in the USA, in October 2022.

“The critical design review was an important process and milestone before entering into the manufacturing cycle,” said Mike Syverson, Gogo’s senior vice president of engineering. “Given the challenges that our supplier experienced in 2022, we felt that passing this amount of review would give us the confidence necessary to deliver 5G in 2023.”

Gogo anticipates that the 5G service will provide ~25Mbps on average, with peak speeds in the 75-80Mbps range. It has been designed to deliver high throughput with very low latency, to address the increasing demand for data-heavy interactive services such as video conferencing, live TV and gaming.

Gogo is working with each of the business aviation original equipment manufacturers and several authorised Gogo dealers to develop additional STCs that will cover more than 30 aircraft models, both in the aftermarket or from the factory.