This past year has seen extraordinary changes in the airborne connectivity market, with new entrant Starlink making big inroads, SmartSky’s sudden shutdown and resurrection, Gogo buying Satcom Direct, and Viasat consolidating its 2023 purchase of Inmarsat. Competition in the low-earth-orbit (LEO) market is heating up with the arrival of Starlink’s aviation service and the imminent launch of Gogo Galileo on Eutelsat’s OneWeb network, and other entrants such as Telesat and Kuiper planning to enter this space.

Meanwhile, the U.S. air-to-ground (ATG) market, thought to be ceded to Gogo Business Aviation after SmartSky’s shutdown in August, will remain competitive with Apcela’s October announcement that it is buying SmartSky’s assets and relaunching the ATG service. Apcela, which built the network for SmartSky, hopes to complete the acquisition by the end of the year, and plans call to switch the service back on around mid-December. This will be welcome news for aircraft owners who installed SmartSky systems and were facing the prospect of replacing them.

LEO Satcom

At October’s NBAA-BACE show, Gogo Business Aviation COO Sergio Aguirre said that the planned purchase of Satcom Direct wasn’t in response to Starlink’s rapid rise. This was the third attempt to buy Satcom Direct, he explained, with issues such as debt payments hindering previous efforts. “This was not an acquisition based on defense,” he said. “We’re on full-on offense.” 

Gogo isn’t targeting Starlink customers with its Galileo LEO system but rather the still-large number of business aviation customers who don’t have airborne connectivity. “This has nothing to do with Starlink, but it sure is going to make their life hard,” he said.

One advantage that Galileo has over Starlink is antenna size. Gogo is offering two electronically steered antennas (ESAs) for Galileo: the smaller HDX (half-duplex) or larger FDX (full-duplex). The HDX, about half the size of the FDX, is better suited for installations on smaller aircraft, although Starlink has demonstrated its system installed on a King Air 200 using a supplemental type certificate (STC) developed by AeroMech. The Starlink antenna weighs about 48 pounds and measures 39 inches long and 31 inches wide, while Gogo’s HDX weighs 21.6 pounds and is 24 inches long, 11.8 inches wide, and 2.1 inches high. The FDX weighs 40 to 45 pounds, with a length of 30 inches, width 24.6 inches, and height the same at 2.1 inches.

Starlink has picked up the pace on STCs and has many more coming, principally from AeroMech and Nextant Aerospace. More recently, Starlink opened the door to OEM STC development, and Gulfstream was first with an OEM STC, starting with the G650, with many other models to come. Textron Aviation service centers are now installing AeroMech’s Starlink STC on the 560XL and King Air 200 and 300.

Retail price of a Starlink system is $150,000 and that includes the antenna, power supply unit, two wireless access points, and wiring harness. Service prices range from $2,000 per month for 20 GB (plus $100 per GB additional) to $10,000 per month for unlimited, with download speeds from 40 to 220 Mbps and upload 8 to 25 Mbps.

Gogo Galileo systems as an add-on to Avance L5 ATG cost $120,000 for HDX or $190,000 for FDX. Service speed for the HDX system is up to 60 Mbps download and 11 Mbps upload, while the FDX will offer 195 Mbps download and 32 Mbps upload. Service pricing starts at $3,500 per month for 25 GB to $10,500 for unlimited data.

GEO Satcom

Gogo’s purchase of Satcom Direct gives it some new geostationary orbit (GEO) satcom product lines that supplement the Gogo Galileo LEO and ATG products.

Satcom Direct has developed its own line of PlaneSimple antennas for GEO satcom as well as offering Ku-band satcom through its Intelsat FlexExec service. The Plane Simple mechanically steered antennas are available for Ku- and Ka-band GEO satcom, but Satcom Direct also developed an ESA for Eutelsat OneWeb.

Uniquely, Satcom Direct had announced a program where aircraft owners can buy the ESA equipment for a fixed monthly fee of $15,000 and no initial capital outlay, for a three-year period.

It is not known yet whether Gogo will keep all of these products after it completes the Satcom Direct acquisition. However, it is clear that Gogo will offer strong competition for Starlink and the long-entrenched GEO satcom provider, Viasat (and its Inmarsat products). 

Since buying Inmarsat in 2023, Viasat has consolidated the two companies’ business aviation offerings into four key product lines: Jet ConneX, Viasat Ka, SwiftJet, and SwiftBroadband. The latter is still the only safety services-qualified satcom available other than Iridium.

SwiftJet was a new Inmarsat service announced just before the acquisition, and it will be marketed by three distribution partners, Collins Aerospace, Honeywell, and Satcom Direct. Sharing the same L-band satcom frequency band as SwiftBroadband, SwiftJet operates at up to 2.6 Mbps, four times faster than SwiftBroadband. Terminals were scheduled to start shipping in the fourth quarter.

Jet ConneX runs on the former Inmarsat satellite network while Viasat operates its own satellites, so these are separate systems. A trend in the satcom market has been owners selecting dual-band systems—for example, one Ka- and one Ku-band terminal—in aircraft large enough to accommodate two antennas. Now, buyers have the choice of buying dual-network systems from one company, and this can help ensure that communication remains online even if one network is having problems.