Internet From Space Becomes More Ubiquitous With New High-Speed Satellites

Internet per satellite is the only available option to be online for ocean-crossing airplanes or ships, and remote places. It was also a very expensive option until recently, but is now becoming more comparable with mobile internet costs. General technological progress dictates this development, and a fine example is the world's highest capacity satellite for internet ViaSat-1 with a total bandwidth of 140 GBit which enabled affordable internet service in North America.

This service is in fact so successful, according to financial results published by the public company (NASDAQ: VSAT), that they already ordered an additional satellite that will be twice as fast. ViaSat-2, which is based on ViaSat's next generation, Ka-band satellite technology and architecture, will be built together with strategic partner Boeing. The companies announced that the satellite is expected to be, by far, the world's highest capacity satellite at the time of launch (scheduled for mid-2016) achieving an unparalleled mix of capacity and coverage. ViaSat-2 is anticipated to approximately double the bandwidth economics of ViaSat-1 while simultaneously increasing its coverage footprint by seven-fold.

ViaSat-2 is expected to significantly improve the speed and availability of broadband services over a greatly expanded coverage area that includes North America, Central America, the Caribbean, a small portion of northern South America as well as the primary aeronautical and maritime routes across the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe.

The satellite will represent a major advancement of satellite broadband technology since the initial development of ViaSat-1, which recently earned a Guinness World Records(R) title as the highest-capacity communications satellite in the world. It should be noted though that the total bandwidth offered by satellites like this is still limiting the number of concurrent users to less than 100,000 (140 Gbit of ViaSat-1 divided by 10 Mbit equals 14,000) and should not be compared to the vastly larger throughput capabilities of large scale fiber networks.

Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, commented on their announcement: "It's clear that superior bandwidth economics in space create competitive advantages on the ground, in the air, and at sea, compared to other satellite and terrestrial alternatives. ViaSat-2 represents a significant breakthrough in broadband satellite technology - for the very first time combining extremely high bandwidth capacity with very large coverage areas. ViaSat-2 will make it possible to offer superior in-flight connectivity on applications ranging from JetBlue leisure flights to the Caribbean to U.S. government aircraft traveling to Europe or Latin America, to critical national and Homeland Security missions. ViaSat-2 will also combine unprecedented capacity and coverage with operational flexibility - solving historically intractable issues in geographical distribution of bandwidth demand, capital investments, and system performance."