Much of the talk about current 5G network rollouts has naturally focused on terrestrial deployments throughout the world, but Gogo now claims to be the first provider with plans to launch 5G services in the sky.

Gogo, which supplies broadband connectivity products and services to the aviation market, just announced its intention to build a 5G network for business aviation aircraft, commercial regional jets, and smaller mainline jets operating within the United States and Canada.

The company aims to launch Gogo 5G in 2021 to coincide with the increasing availability of 5G services on the ground. Gogo CEO Oakleigh Thorne said Gogo 5G “is the next step in our technology evolution and is expected to deliver an unparalleled user experience, pairing high performance with low latency and network-wide redundancy.”

The company, which was founded more than 20 years ago under the Aircell brand and launched its first services based on its air-to-ground (ATG) network in 2008, said it will build the 5G network on the existing 250 cell towers it already leases for the ATG service.

It intends to use unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4 GHz range along with a “proprietary modem” and advanced beamforming technology. It also said the 5G infrastructure will support licensed, shared, and unlicensed spectrum as well as mid, high, and low bands. Furthermore, the existing 3G and 4G networks in the U.S. and Canada will provide a backup for the 5G network when required. Other details were thin on the ground, however.

Gogo’s services have already proved to be of interest to terrestrial wireless carriers such as T-Mobile US, which provides its customers with up to one hour of free in-flight WiFi based on the Gogo network. Gogo’s ambition to offer 5G services could be a ploy to set it apart from rivals in what is becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace for ATG inflight connectivity, particularly in the U.S.

For example, rival SmartSky Networks is said to be expected to switch on its ATG network serving much of continental U.S. this year. Furthermore, avionics manufacturer Avidyne and Airspan, an LTE small cell and base station manufacturer, have formed a partnership called AirSky to develop regional ATG telecommunications networks. In Europe, Deutsche Telekom and Inmarsat, with support from partners including Nokia, have built the European Aviation Network (EAN) that is based on 292 specialized LTE masts in 30 countries — the 28 European Union member countries plus Norway and Switzerland — and an Inmarsat S‑band satellite. Rumors also surfaced in 2018 that Google was in talks to buy Nokia’s airborne broadband system to offer faster in-flight WiFi services, although little appears to have been reported on this since.

Also worth noting here is that Gogo has previously been linked to the Seamless Air Alliance formed by Airbus, Bharti Airtel, Delta Air Lines, OneWeb — the U.S. satellite startup backed by Japan’s SoftBank — and Sprint in 2018 with the ultimate goal of enabling in-flight 5G services. Despite confirming it had joined the alliance in February 2018, Gogo is not listed as a member on the alliance’s website. The number of members has now increased to 23, and the alliance is reportedly preparing its first technology demonstration later in 2019. It aims to promote open standards to enable travellers on any flight to connect to the internet using their own devices without any complicated login processes.