New Delta-GoGo Contract
 

Delta has negotiated a new contract with GoGo that allows other wi-fi providers to bid on providing internet within the fleet. Previously, it was an exclusive contract with GoGo. The new deal also gives Delta more control over pricing.

https://paxex.aero/2020/06/delta-gogo-contract-changes/

Smart move by Delta. The article suggests these changes were necessary for DL to achieve their desire to provide free WiFi across the fleet.

Wonder how much Gogo is hurting from all of the flight reductions... and especially business travel being almost zero.

I'm sure Gogo is hurting, but personally from a glass-half-full perspective, not having business travel gives me the perk of not having to be frustrated by Gogo's terrible wifi connections.

I thought DL was going to move to free Wifi? I recall reading that here a year or so ago.

No, they do not have free WiFi yet. Not yet. They haven't decide it yet.

Gogo should be plenty fast with almost nobody on board using it currently :p

I'd expect GoGo to have a lot of business subscription contracts paid by employers. I'm not sure how quickly those have been cancelled.

Sounds like GoGo doesn't have enough capacity to meet Delta's needs. From the below article, contract expirations were moved up to 2020-2022 from 2027.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-new-suppliers

Better that than United's crappy satellite wifi, at least!

I only liked GoGo when I got free passes via Amex. Now that that’s over, I say dump it in favor of something better.

FWIW, I cx’d ours end of April. At this point, I don’t see renewing it until end of July, at the earliest.

And I pray they don't. On business routes the Wifi is already garbage - and not just because of latency inherent in satellites but because of

100 mbps a plane may have sounded like a lot 5 years ago when 2ku was first being rolled out (and certainly dreamy compared to the <10 mbps that A2G had, albeit with serious latency consequences), but it's basically nothing now. With everything SaaS and live documents in the cloud, you burn through bandwidth very quickly. On any business traveler heavy route it's incredibly slow and flaky. I find it hilarious that they advertise video streaming on those flights as even getting a 60 second YouTube video to load at 480p takes 5 minutes. It just doesn't work.

I realize the free WiFi tier would have limitations (basically an extension of the free WiFi tier today.. lightweight web browsing, no video), but it's already garbage enough as is. To deliver a quality free product with few limitations would require 500 mbps+ per plane in my opinion - with a gigabit being ideal.

Well, I'll be disappointed if they move to multiple suppliers like AA. I don't have a subscription, but I do get an hour free on each flight as part of my T-Mobile plan. When I travel internationally, I usually pay the extra $15 for the month to upgrade to the higher level T-Mobile plan which includes unlimited GoGo and faster data abroad. One nice thing about DL is knowing I'll be able to use this perk; with AA it's almost never available unless flying WiFi-equipped regional jets domestically and is a crapshoot internationally.

DL should just acquire a company that does this. This is an aspect of the user experience they are going to have to master. Multiple carriers is not the answer - users need a seamless experience.