Under a new long-term distribution partnership agreement, Gogo Business Aviation will market and sell OneWeb’s inflight broadband services for business aviation around the world.
The agreement, OneWeb’s first announced distribution partner for the business aviation market, was signed at EBACE 2022 between Ben Griffin, vice president of mobility at OneWeb, and Jim MacDougall, vice president of product management for Gogo.
“We’re committed to developing and deploying a high-speed, consistent and global low-latency connectivity solution for the business aviation industry, that has been developed by the business aviation community,” said Griffin. “Leveraging the experience and expertise of world-class partners such as Gogo is consistent with this approach.”
OneWeb’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation has been designed to deliver an ‘office in the sky’ broadband experience for business aviation operators and passengers.
OneWeb selected Gogo owing to its reputation, maturity in the market and deep business aviation heritage. Gogo Business Aviation has more than 4,500 narrowband satcom systems installed and flying worldwide, and is a factory option at every major business aircraft manufacturer.
“For more than 30 years, Gogo Business Aviation has been a driving force behind the technological innovations that have connected the skies,” said MacDougall. “This agreement with OneWeb enables Gogo to continue to disrupt and innovate to bring our customers superior connectivity solutions while expanding our service to a global audience.”
OneWeb’s technology is designed to enable performance comparable to terrestrial broadband services, and latency of less than 100ms. It is designed to deliver high-quality, consistent user experiences, including polar region coverage. OneWeb is aiming to launch services for business aviation in 2024.
The company said passengers will be able to participate in multiple simultaneous uninterrupted live video conferences and access cloud solutions such as Office365. The solution is also designed to allow access to entertainment including Live TV and content-streaming applications such as Netflix and Amazon Video, and enable passengers to keep in touch with family using FaceTime, WhatsApp and similar services.
