Often when someone says something is not about the money there’s little doubt that it is entirely about the money. When it comes to delivering free WiFi for all of its passengers, however, Delta Air Lines‘ CEO Ed Bastian is probably telling the truth. It is not the cost of the service, but making sure the network can handle the dramatic uptick in demand. And, while it is easy to read that as a slam against the existing infrastructure the reality is far more nuanced than that, and suggests that it really is just a matter of when, not if, Gogo can support the load.
It’s really just a question of technical depths. I’m worried that if we turned it on now, it’s going to cause system outages.
– Delta CEO Ed Bastian speaking at the Skift Forum last week about free WiFi for passengers
So, just how close are the companies to reaching that goal? Gogo CEO Oakleigh Thorne declined to give a timeline, yielding to Delta for that announcement, but believes the two company’s progress is impressive and continues to move forward. “The teams are working very collaboratively. We’re looking at a very significant ramp in what we think the take rates will be. We’re busy scaling to make sure the system will handle it properly. We lease capacity, so we’re scaling our capacity up.”
Increasing satellite capacity arguably requires the most lead-time and capital expense, but it is not the only factor in play. As Thorne explains, “[Y]ou scale on many different fronts, everything from portals to [satellite] capacity to ground [gateways]. Obviously the commercial arrangements are changing as well. So there’s all sorts of things that are scaling. We’ve got six work streams that are all running full steam and they all affect different aspects of the program. Some of are technology, some of which are not.”
One challenge with satellite capacity is the long lead times to get new payloads into orbit. With new Ku-band launches slowing and the recent loss of Intelsat 29e there is good reason to question just how much bandwidth is available for Gogo and Delta to consume, especially as the take rates increase. When questioned on whether Gogo has access to enough (not necessarily under contract today, but available) Ku-band capacity to meet the expected demand Thorne offered a simple answer, “Absolutely.”
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Hilarious. Gogo is the single worst in flight wifi available, bar none. And here they pretend that every other airline in the USA hasn’t already solved this problem. I travel extensively on locked Delta routes and have given up on gogo – they cannot deliver what jetblue has had for seven years now – reliable wifi onboard. Gogo is no solution – your article should be about Delta looking to qualified vendors who can do this that Delta is working with now after tossing gogo to the curb. How about some integrity in reporting a colossal failure of Delta to bring even the most basic internet to it’s planes in this day and age. Nothing about satellites and nonsense – those are excuses and nonsense to the business traveler paying $900 to do Boston to Cincinnati three times a month without decent internet!
I suppose you’re not really interested in the part about how that route in particular is flown by planes that have the older, lower capacity option, huh? I would expect that experience to suck.
And scaling up the old ATG product will be a very real challenge for Delta and Gogo as the airline aims to bring this online. I’d expect that the ATG-NG solution will be part of that, opening up a ton more spectrum to increase capacity to the planes. But it isn’t really a product yet.
GoGo GO HOME! The worst in-flight wi-fi ever. FYI.. I just reached Gold Medallion on Delta.
I’ve used pretty much every product in service today (save for one in Saudi Arabia). Gogo is not the worst. Not by a long shot. Even the ATG4 kit can beat out some of the other implementations.
It also is not consistently the best. But “Gogo” is also at least 4 different offerings, plus airline choices on what it will cost and what the speeds will be. The throttling that you can get on different systems is impressive in its range and impact (More details on that here: https://paxex.aero/what-bandwidth-are-you-buying-in-the-sky/).
Hi Seth, how does the recent passengers choice count?
Afraid I don’t quite understand the question.
I wonder….if Gogo is so bad as some people keep saying on and on, why and how did Delta win the best wifi award at the recent APEX/IFSA conference. Why didn’t JetBlue win it if they are supposed to be so good?
While I have served on the panel that helps score the APEX/IFSA awards, the “Passenger Choice” version that Delta won is based on a semi-opaque set of ratings collected only from passengers using TripIt or Concur and then subject to some other considerations. Among them, the user has to not only rank the overall flight but also rank the individual components, including the WiFi.
This leads to a higher percentage of business traveler users and those numbers are likely to skew in favor of the legacy carriers as JetBlue’s business traveler share is relatively low.
But, as with many awards that are based on public voting, the results do not always reflect an objective and truly comparative view of the products. There’s a very, very good chance that the people voting have not experienced all the different options or even more than one regularly.
I’ve been platinum for years with Delta…and I can say with complete confidence, gogo sucks, even on the newer Airbus planes with high-speed gogo. I have literally never had a single experience with gogo that even comes close to matching what is advertised
I travel regularly and I think GOGO on Delta is really, really good.
I don’t really understand the people who are trashing Gogo. You clearly haven’t been on a 2Ku plane and used a streaming pass. Heck, you probably haven’t even been on an ATG4 plane lately where the experience has gotten better as more aircraft move to satellite.
For comparisons sake, I’ve been on several “free Wi-Fi” JetBlue flights where the ViaSat service was utter garbage. United Viasat, same. Gogo’s 2Ku service is as good as the other services out there until you hit the airline and/or Gogo imposed data caps. All IFC providers have such caps but the way they’re handled varies and I’ve found Gogo’s to be a bit harsher. It’s all about economics though and I get that. Before you trash a company based on its legacy, make sure you know what you’re talking about.
Wow, cool terms you use there. They mean absolutely nothing. I fly Delta two to three times a week, and found that their internet system simply stinks. Maybe what you’re considering our longer range, longer haul flights. However I have to pay $1,200 to fly between Boston and Cincinnati, and the internet on that plane simply sucks. That is my experience. So when you’re asking me about my experience, I am telling you exactly from my own experience. In fact I flew that route twice in the last two days, and both times the wife I did not work. Mike’s comment is based on my personal experience on planes Delta, that have Go-Go. Which does not work. thanks for all your cool terminology though, it means nothing if it has nothing to do with someone’s personal experience.
And you should expect that it is going to be relatively crappy on that route.
There is no single “Gogo” solution that defines the performance/experience using the product across all planes where the company has its hardware installed. The newer satellite-based installations work very well generally speaking. The older terrestrial network does not.