Gogo Inflight Wireless To Start Using Satellite Connections

I dread flying for a variety of reasons, but most of which has nothing to do with the physical act of leaving the ground and being 30K feet in the air. The obvious complaints is the ridicules airfares, TSA practices, and the amount of wasted time waiting for flights and in line. My frustrations don’t end there and one of the next complaints is Wifi connection speed while in flight. This is nothing new and we all are aware of the limitations companies like Gogo have because of using ground based signal to provide their connection. IF you are flying with little or no signal then the connection obviously because very poor. Also affecting connections speeds is the amount of people connecting to the internet and the lack of bandwidth Gogo has to provide.

Today however, Gogo, who has the lions share of the inflight Wifi business as 80%, has announced they are going to start using Satellites to improve the connection speeds and stabilize the bandwidth so that streaming video fro, YouTube or Netflix will be possible. Gogo states that they are getting 6mbps currently but with the new satellite connections they should see speeds up to 60mbps. The only downside is that upload speed will still be at snail speeds.

Another potential problem will be that some airline carriers will have to upgrade their onboard equipment to receive the satellite signal and currently will not work with international travel. Gogo has told Forbes that they have a solution for that in the works.

So when can we expect better domestic internet connections? According to Gogo it could roll out aircraft retrofit equipment in 2013-2014 and we should start streaming with satellite connections speeds in the second half of 2014.

You can cross horrifying connection speeds off your list of airline travel frustrations now!