Gogo Business Aviation is progressing on equipment installation and testing of its 5G air-to-ground (ATG) network for a 2022 launch, attaining several new milestones, the Colorado-based company said today. In terms of the ground network, Gogo has installed the first two 5G antennas on a tower, permitting prototype testing of system performance. It also represents the start of the fourth ATG network Gogo has designed and built over 28 years, noted Dave Glenn, the company's senior v-p of customer operations.

Additionally, its 5G air card prototype has been completed, as has coast-to-coast aerodynamics flight testing of its 5G belly-mounted antennas. As part of the validation of the hardware’s performance, a connection between the aircraft and ground antennas was completed during flight.

Gogo senior v-p of engineering Mike Syverson added that using a 5G SIM card, the company successfully performed an end-to-end call from the aircraft to the cell site, through its data center to the internet, and back. It’s a process that has required “a lot of software development to put those pieces together,” he said.

“The tests we’ve conducted and successfully passed validate what we modeled when we initially announced we would build a 5G network,” Syverson said. “Through the testing we’ve done so far, we now know that Gogo 5G is going to be better than we originally thought it would be.”