ViaSat-1 Offers New Opportunity to Convince Regulators on Satellite Broadband
The launch of ViaSat-1 gives Viasat a new chance to convince regulators of satellites of their usefulness in bringing broadband to hard-to-reach areas, said Tom Moore, ViaSat senior vice president, in an interview Friday. Satellite companies have increased the push in recent years for increased government recognition of them as broadband providers. The new satellite marks a shift for ViaSat, which has its origins as a satellite system components manufacturer, though the purchase of WildBlue in 2009 has helped with the transition, said Moore. Moore co-founded WildBlue.
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Discussion of satellite broadband at the FCC and on Capitol Hill is still at the beginning stages, he said. “I would say we're in the early days” of “growing awareness of what satellite broadband can be,” both economically and in terms of performance, said Moore. The company has done well at “trying to convince regulators” of the potential for the coming abilities of satellite broadband, said Moore.
There’s a “beginning awareness” and the next step is to “actually prove that in the marketplace,” said Moore. ViaSat-1 will help make the case for satellite versus other terrestrial broadband services, he said. Now it’s “not just us saying that, but their constituents saying that,” which will mean “as much or more as all the words we have said over the last year,” he said. There’s “cautious optimism” for satellite’s role in broadband. The technology gained some recognition through the broadband stimulus, which is still funding some new customers, said Moore. Satellite broadband failed to get as big a role as it had hoped as part of the universal service fund reform, industry executives have said.
The new satellite will allow ViaSat to focus more on the “underserved” rather than the “unserved” with ViaSat-1, a “big change” for the company, Moore said. New services like VoIP and coming media services, described as “video and enhanced treatment,” are some other big changes for the company, he said. Moore wouldn’t detail the media services because they're “early in the development.” The new satellite will help ViaSat deal with perception of satellite as only a “last resort,” he said. The new Excede 12 service package should give an experience similar to cable, said Moore. The early comments from users have been very positive, he said.
ViaSat has activated about three quarters of the new high-throughput satellite’s beams and expects it to be fully operational for wholesale and retail service by the month’s end, Moore said: “Both our retail partners and wholesale partners are just beginning to kind of exercise their legs here. We're starting to see some volume build.” Moore said it’s too early to give specifics on demand and customer numbers on the satellite but it’s “encouraging.” The Ka-band ViaSat-1, which launched in October to 115 degrees west, will cover the U.S. east and west coasts as well as Alaska and Hawaii. The satellite marks an important milestone for ViaSat, which has needed new capacity to handle subscriber growth.
The new satellite also means the addition of a new brand in Excede, which the company announced at CES (CD Jan 12 p12). As a result, ViaSat will no longer be adding customers under the WildBlue name, said Moore. “What we're doing with the WildBlue brand name is we are keeping that brand for all our legacy services,” which includes around 400,000 customers on the WildBlue packages. Competitively, ViaSat “looks up the ladder” and compares itself more to DSL providers than satellite broadband, said Moore.
The move to satellite operations has been more of a “branding adjustment” rather than an operational one, said Moore. ViaSat’s 2009 purchase of WildBlue, which owns two satellites and leases space on another, has helped ready ViaSat for the ViaSat-1 services, he said. “Plugging the ViaSat-1 satellite into that operational infrastructure has been pretty straightforward,” he said. Over the last year and a half the company has made some big infrastructure upgrades, including billing systems and data centers, he said. The company is already talking about ordering a ViaSat-2 satellite, though Moore declined to talk specifics on that satellite or the patent infringement suit ViaSat recently filed against Space Systems/Loral.