Just like its passengers, American Airlines wants to have a better WiFi service on its flights. To attain its goal, the airline is suing its in-flight WiFi provider Gogo in order to get the company to improve speeds or allow it to break the contract.
Spotted first by BuzzFeed News, a regulatory filing shows that American Airlines appears to have found a more capable provider in ViaSat, although under the existing contract Gogo must create a competing proposal or allow the firm to terminate the agreement. In other words, if Gogo can’t match the speeds of ViaSat, it must allow the airline to end the agreement.
Gogo’s regulatory filing says:
“We have received certain inquiries regarding a declaratory judgment action filed against Gogo by American Airlines last Friday. We have no comment on the merits of this litigation, but we would like to note that American is a valued customer of ours and that we look forward to resolving the disagreement regarding contract interpretation that led to this declaratory judgment action”.
“[…] We plan to submit a competing proposal to install our latest satellite technology – 2Ku – on this fleet. We believe that 2Ku is the best performing technology in the market and look forward to discussing our offer with American”.
According to Andrew DeGasperi from BuzzFeed, losing American Airlines would result in a 14 to 15 percent drop in revenue for Gogo.
SOURCE: TheNextWeb.com.
Larry Banks is a keen follower of technology and finance. He has worked for a variety of online publications, writing about a diverse range of topics including mobile networks, patents, and Internet video delivery technologies.
