When Gogo launches its 5G air-to-ground (ATG) network, it will deliver the fastest, most capable inflight internet experience available to business aviation customers flying in the U.S. and Canada. Gogo is using a technology commonly referred to as channel bonding to provide speeds and bandwidth comparable to those achieved at home or in the office while increasing the reliability of an already exceeding reliable network.

“Channel bonding allows Gogo to send and deliver data on both our existing licensed 850 MHz spectrum and the unlicensed 2.4 GHz 5G spectrum simultaneously,” said Sanjeev Nagpal, Director of Product Management at Gogo Business Aviation. “It’s an addition in capacity that greatly increases bandwidth and is one of the key technologies to bringing an office-like connectivity experience to the aircraft.”

The fact that Gogo has access to both of these spectrums is unique to Gogo. While the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band is available to essentially everyone from cellphone providers to home Wi-Fi units, Gogo’s licensed 850 MHz spectrum means that no other traffic can use that channel, and that’s an important distinction.

Knowing that less traffic on the network equals better performance for the users on that network, Gogo began reducing the number of users on its licensed 850 MHz network by transitioning many of its commercial customers to its satellite solution 2Ku. That initiative began in July 2017 and during that time traffic from users on the commercial airlines on the ATG network has been reduced by 40 percent. With the pending sale of its commercial aviation division to Intelsat, which was announced in September 2020 and is expected to close by the end of the first quarter in 2021, Gogo business aviation users should see network performance increase even further.

Channel bonding will seamlessly combine the fast and relatively traffic-free 850 MHz spectrum with the lightning-fast but publicly used 2.4 GHz spectrum. Gogo 5G customers will benefit from the best of both channels as proprietary software installed in the new 5G airborne antennas and the on-ground base stations automatically divides up data packets and sends them through the most efficient routes available.

“When you go to most websites, you’re not just pulling data from one server, you’re pulling data from multiple servers,” Nagpal said. “With channel bonding, we have the ability to fan out and run the request results on multiple ‘lanes,’ then aggregate the data on the other end. When both lanes are open and available, the data gets sent out in parallel, allowing more data to be sent and received faster. But if one lane is slow or gets blocked, the other is still open for use.”

The built-in redundancy of the channel bonding technology brings even greater reliability to Gogo’s ATG network, which already achieves greater than 99 percent uptime availability. Almost every cellphone user experiences the reliability of multiple networks when their network coverage switches between 4G/3G and take it for granted on the ground. Gogo is the only company to offer this for inflight connectivity. 

“The common perception with the two networks is that the 850 MHz is just a backup for the 5G network,” said Trent Welander, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Gogo Business Aviation. “That’s a big misconception because the channel-bonding software will always be using both networks at the same time unless one is unavailable. Only then does it use one network by itself.”

Redundancy and reliability are critical to the airborne internet user experience as the aircraft travels through pockets of congested airspace and over sparsely populated areas. In urban areas where millions of devices may be competing on the 2.4 GHz spectrum, the Gogo 5G channel bonding software may send more data packets down the licensed 850 MHz spectrum. Cruising along at 30,000 feet between areas of congestion where fewer users are online, the 850 MHz channel may merely augment the 2.4 GHz spectrum, but both would be used for a seamless experience.

Channel bonding also allows for even greater capacity in the future. In a previously released statement posted on the Gogo website, Gogo Senior Vice President of Operations and Engineering Mike Syverson described using multiple spectrums as “a big competitive advantage.”

“Through channel bonding and carrier aggregation, we are able to use a much bigger frequency range as we design the [5G] network,” said Syverson. “Additionally, as spectrum opportunities become available and the ability for us to use either continuous spectrum or spectrum that is not in the same block, we will be able to add additional capacity and capabilities to our network without having to build a whole new network in the future. We’re designing the Gogo 5G network with all of that in mind.”