Viasat took a big step toward satellite staying power last weekend, as the long-awaited launch of the first of the ViaSat-3 trio rumbled off the ground (thanks to the “full power” version of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.)
The feat brings a new punch to Viasat’s network, helping it grow its share of the satellite communications market and bolster its existing position against the low Earth orbit challengers such as SpaceX’s Starlink, OneWeb and Amazon’s Kuiper.
The first of the three planned satellites, the “Americas” satellite, is currently on its way to the distant geosynchronous orbit, with the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) satellites expected to launch in the coming months. Each satellite is the most powerful communications spacecraft ever launched, with over 1 Terabit per second of capacity, more than triple its ViaSat-2 predecessor.
Earlier this year I sat down with Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg in D.C., and as our scheduled 30-minute conversation stretched into an hour, we discussed what ViaSat-3 means for the company, especially in its strategy versus other LEO players.
“With Viasat-3 we’ll have much more bandwidth than we did before… we’ll probably have three to four times the bandwidth that we did prior to that in the U.S.,” Dankberg said at the time.
The new satellites also give Viasat “a lot of flexibility” in where it aims the bandwidth, Dankberg said. He’s particularly keen on growing the company’s reach in the in-flight WiFi market, with multiple major commercial airlines — Delta, United, American and Southwest — already on Viasat’s roster of clients.
Dankberg sees Viasat-3 as “more successful in business aviation,” particularly by adding coverage over the Pacific. And there’s opportunity in other transportation sectors, such as trains or maritime.
“We’ll have enough bandwidth to serve the markets that we do know, and we want to create some for these others,” Dankberg said.
As for Viasat’s competitors, Dankberg thinks Amazon “is more methodical” than SpaceX in its approach — “Amazon doesn’t have to focus on raising money” — and said he was “a little bit surprised” that Kuiper is going after the consumer internet market, like Starlink has, but expects Amazon to be “very efficient” given its broader internal tech synergies.
