Aircell garners $176M in financing

Aircell announced it has completed the private placement of equity securities totaling $176 million to new and existing investors, which weren't revealed. Proceeds of the financing will fund capital investments for network expansion and operating needs.

Aircell has now deployed the in-flight Gogo WiFi service on 700 planes with eight airlines. Aircell hasn't released the number of total unique users it has nor any revenues or other information, such as paid vs. free users, but it has indicated that more than 2 million sessions have been logged on the service. Estimates are that a minority of people who take flights that offer WiFi service are actually using it. Prices of the Gogo service range from $5 to $13 per fight, depending on the airline and the length of time in the air.

Aircell is now looking beyond Internet access with plans to launch an in-flight video downloading service later this year [1], giving airline passengers the ability to download a movie or television show for a fee to their laptops during flights via the Gogo WiFi connection.

 For more:
- see this release [2]

Related articles:
Aircell to introduce in-flight video download service [1]
Why aren't travelers paying for in-flight WiFi? [3]
Aircell CEO: 2,000 aircraft will offer Gogo by year end 2009 [4]
Aircell reports more than 1M inflight Internet users, but are travelers paying? [5]