The Business of Passenger Experience
Fresh off the announcement of its first commercial airline customer, upstart inflight connectivity provider SmartSky secured additional funding to complete its nationwide network deployment. The company announced a $104mm investment, bringing the total investment for the company to nearly $350 million.
The on again, off again drama of Chinese telecom manufacturer ZTE flared up again this week. Reports from the White House suggest that Huawei and ZTE could be the target of a new Executive Order banning the sale of systems from those companies in the United States. It would be invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, allowing the president to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency. And it could significantly impact the future of Gogo's Air-to-Ground data network, especially the ATG-NG development.
Coming on the heels of yesterday’s strong earnings report for Gogo’s Business Aviation segment the company announced a new deal today for the Gogo AVANCE L3 platform. Fractional jet services operator Airshare will equip its fleet of Embraer Phenom 100 aircraft with the kit, bringing inflight wifi connectivity online for its customers.
Services, services, services everywhere! Once the connection (mostly) works and signups of new customers slows the need to better support the existing installs grows. Gogo DASH helps the company continue to build out the services ecosystem that keeps customers loyal to the installed product. The more different touch points that use the installed kit, the harder it is to shift away.
Is Google poised to launch an inflight internet service? The company is rumored to be looking at a Nokia division to pick up the necessary hardware for such. Scratch beneath the surface, however, and more viable use cases emerge.
