Transforming Satellite Broadband

The demand for broadband by satellite is indisputable, as is the growing demand for more bandwidth. Both times a new broadband satellite has launched, a spike in subscriber uptake followed. Then within months, capacity was sold out in key geographic areas, capping subscriber growth.

ViaSat-1 is aimed at meeting this obvious demand:

• Economically deliver Internet multimedia
• More capacity than all current North American satellites combined
• Designed to host more than one million subscribers
• 10 times the throughput of any other Ka-band satellite
• In-orbit costs per Gbyte only a fraction of even the newest satellites in orbit
  
• More – and cheaper – bits in space
• Enable service on a par with median DSL
  

Bringing Subscribers What They Want
Current satellite systems aren’t designed for the high bandwidth applications that people want, such as video, photo sharing, VoIP, and peer-to-peer networking.  The solution is to increase the capacity of the satellite and allocate more bandwidth per customer at the same price.

Eclipsing All Current Capacity
The chart shows the baseline designed capacity of ViaSat-1.

Expressing the gains in terms of service levels, median DSL speed in the U.S. is 768 kbps and median cable speed is much faster, at about 4.5 Mbps. ViaSat-1 will let distributors price a basic service at 2 Mbps compared to 512 kbps now, raising satellite to about the 80th percentile of DSL. Premium plans would easily surpass the best DSL service, and put satellite well above the current median for cable.

Expanding Our Role as a Technology Supplier
We are expanding our role in the Ka-band satellite market, where we are already the leading technology supplier. Over the past few years we’ve assembled an exceptional group of technologies that make this innovation possible:

• The leading Ka-band satellite ODU supplier
• DVB S2 SkyPhy chips
• Network and application acceleration software
• Ka-band satellite antennas and gateway systems
  
• Satellite payloads and system design

An Experienced Team of Ka-band Innovators
The venture joins us together with strategic partners with a record of innovation and success in this market:

• Space Systems Loral
• Telesat Canada
• Eutelsat

To enable ISPs and satellite service providers to expand their network reach and compete more effectively, we offer this low-cost, high-volume bandwidth and ground system technology.