American Airlines knows Gogo's in-flight WiFi sucks
And it's suing Gogo over it.
Sick of horrendously slow in-flight WiFi? It turns out you're not alone. American Airlines just filed suit against Gogo, the leading WiFi provider for most airlines, for not living up to its claims of matching or exceeding competitor speeds. Specifically, American Airlines discovered that Gogo rival ViaSat offered "materially" improved service over Gogo's older cell tower technology. As per terms of Gogo's contract, American Airlines is then allowed to terminate the agreement with Gogo and seek services elsewhere.
The suit comes at a rather inopportune time for Gogo, as it's been trying to get airlines interested in its faster 70mpbs satellite-based service called 2ku -- you can read about our experience with it when we took it for a spin a few months ago. It's clear that satellite-based tech is a lot more robust; it can stream video content from Netflix, Twitch and more. Gogo has apparently agreed to get its 2ku tech going in seven different commercial airlines.
As promising as that sounds however, there are several concerns over how fast the speeds can truly be under real-world circumstances as well as how the pricing structure will look like. Regardless of these barriers, it looks like Gogo had better figure out how to get its WiFi service up to snuff before other airlines follow with lawsuits of their own.
