For a long time, Viasat was more known for its defense products than anything else. That all changed when Viasat delivered the highest capacity broadband satellite of its time – ViaSat-1. Soon after came ViaSat-2 with even higher capacity. Now each satellite in the ViaSat-3 constellation is anticipated to deliver at least 1 Terabit of data throughput per second (1Tbps) to its wide range of global customers –on the ground, in the air and at sea.
Seasoned satellite telecommunication professionals Mark Dankberg, Steve Hart and Mark Miller established Viasat in 1986. Together they were critical behind-the-scenes players in the satellite communications world. They delivered solutions for the military, commercial customers and even internet service providers (ISPs), building vital modems for fighter jets that transmitted real-time information to pilots, and ground stations that connected rural homes to the internet.
Expanding its focus in 2008, Viasat stepped into the spotlight when it announced the build of its own satellite, ViaSat-1, the first generation of Viasat’s satellite evolution. It is important to note that VS-1 is not just any satellite. A company press release issued at the time said the $400 million ViaSat-1 would be “the world’s highest capacity broadband satellite.”
Viasat systems engineer Aaron Mendelsohn, who’s played a pivotal role in the development of ViaSat-1, ViaSat-2 and ViaSat-3, said the company innovation that followed helped change the overall perception of satellite communications.
“Before ViaSat-1 came along, communications satellites had pretty low bandwidth capacity, and weren’t really designed for large-scale consumer services,” he said. “So Viasat walks in the door and has an idea of how to actually do it. That required vendors to change their thinking of what was possible.
“It was really Viasat that pushed the existing technology that was being used in space to its maximum. Viasat provided the idea for reconfiguring it, and getting higher capacity, and ViaSat-2 pushed it further.”
ViaSat-3 will push it further still.
Filling a bandwidth gap
Some may wonder what prompted the company 14 years ago to make a leap many saw as risky.
CEO Mark Dankberg saw a consumer need for more affordable bandwidth. The initial idea was to create more broadband for rural North American customers. By 2008, Viasat had been a nearly decade-long supplier for Denver-based ISP WildBlue Communications.
WildBlue launched its service in 2005, and in less than five years, became one of the top 20 broadband U.S. ISPs. The company used the then-new Ka-band spot beam satellite technology, which dramatically lowered the cost of providing high bandwidth internet access.
Dankberg saw the response to WildBlue’s service as the tip of the iceberg. By 2008, high demand for Ka-band services had exceeded the bandwidth supply and capped growth. In Dankberg’s view, the market was large and in serious need of connectivity — which could only be supplied by another, high-capacity satellite.
“We knew it was a big step for us,” he told the San Diego Union Tribune in 2009. “But we didn’t see anyone else aiming to do it.”
Viasat was taking its first steps on the path to becoming a major global satellite operator.
ViaSat-1 was among a new generation of satellites built around the lesser-used Ka-band portion of the radio spectrum, dividing its coverage into spot beams — concentrated areas of satellite signal strength, each covering a particular geographic area. At the time, it offered more gigabits per second than all other communication satellites over North America combined.
Viasat’s move to finance the building of its own satellite took the industry by surprise.
One publication described Viasat’s decision as an “in some eyes risky foray for what had traditionally been a terminal manufacturer with a steady stream of U.S. government and consumer business.”
Dankberg was confident the investment would be worthwhile for both underserved households and Viasat stakeholders, and that Viasat was the company to do it.
“This is a technology opportunity that is right in our sweet spot,” he said in 2008. “We provide ground systems for many commercial and government satellites, and as our activity in satellite payloads has increased, we realized that we could make a major breakthrough by simultaneously designing the spot beam satellite and the ground segment.
Adding Viasat-1 to WildBlue’s network not only provided the bandwidth it needed to grow, but enabled customers to get higher speeds needed for easier video downloads and other online experiences.
In 2009, a year after announcing the construction of ViaSat-1, Viasat bought WildBlue. The acquisition gave Viasat a partner with an already established distribution channel, billing system and customer service. WildBlue’s subscriber base and revenue also helped offset ViaSat-1’s development and brought more subscribers to ViaSat-1.
The communications pioneers of our day
When ViaSat-1 launched in 2011, it won accolades from far and wide.
Guinness World Records named ViaSat-1 the highest-capacity communications satellite in the world — a designation now held by ViaSat-2.
“If we hadn’t done that, either someone else would have, or the satellite industry would be dead,” said Kristi Jaska, Viasat’s Vice President of Customer Experience. “In general, the other satellite operators and providers were busy servicing their current customers, but not really keeping up with the trends in more and more internet usage.”
In an October 2013 article, Forbes magazine praised Viasat for upending what had been the flagging reputation and pace of satellite communications.
“Powered by the success of its ViaSat-1 satellite, CEO Mark Dankberg has become famous for betting the company on ViaSat-1 and winning,” said the article entitled ‘This High Speed Satellite Company Is Defying The Naysayers And Changing Everything.’ “It’s a powerful reminder, at a time when mobile wireless technologies are all the rage, that there is a huge opportunity for new business models to emerge around satellite communications. They are the communications pioneers of our day.”
Key to Viasat’s success in satellite construction then and now is its vertical integration. Company engineers designed ViaSat-1 and ViaSat-2, and built the ground systems. Viasat also provides the service, creating a highly optimized communications system.
Expanding coverage with ViaSat-2
By early 2017, ViaSat-1 was at capacity. The response affirmed Dankberg’s belief that the market was vast and needed still more bandwidth. And Viasat was ready to help meet that demand.
ViaSat-2 launched that year, and ViaSat-3 payloads were already under construction in Tempe.
“The better we can make our service, the bigger our market,” Dankberg said in a February 2017 interview. “But that doesn’t mean we are going after people who have Google Fiber. What we are trying to do is go after a bigger segment of people who don’t have those speeds.”
ViaSat-2, launched in 2017, broadened ViaSat-1’s coverage, enabling faster speeds and increasing monthly data allowances so subscribers could do more streaming.
It also expanded the footprint of broadband services across North America, Central America, the Caribbean, a portion of northern South America, as well as the primary aeronautical and maritime routes across the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe.
Rather than fixed coverage areas, ViaSat-2’s technology also enabled the company to shift capacity to where it was needed most. That allowed flexible coverage to airlines, ships and other mobile users, and bolstered its residential and business internet services.
From ViaSat-1 to ViaSat-2, the company also moved from a hardware-based set up to cloud computer architecture, creating further cost savings and efficiency.
“That gave us a lot of flexibility,” said Carlin Charteris, Viasat’s vice president of global networks and technology. “We use a lot of our sophistication on the ground to provide incremental and substantial leaps in capacity improvements, and make it more valuable over time.”
Going global
ViaSat-3 marks a major engineering accomplishment for Viasat. ViaSat-3 Americas — the first of the three-satellite global constellation — is also the first of our satellite payloads constructed by Viasat employees at a company facility.
The ViaSat-3 constellation is expected to boost total capacity by 600%.
“ViaSat-3 is a whole different animal,” Mendelsohn said. “The complexity of the ground system is much higher, and so is the satellite. We had to help the satellite vendors uncover things they didn’t know they could do, but we knew they could.”
Companies helping to build ViaSat-3 include Boeing and other manufacturers that produce components for the satellites.
“We had to convince them we could make an even bigger satellite with much greater capacity,” he said. “And we did that with electric propulsion.”
Electric propulsion reduces the amount of mass taken up by fuel, which allows for a larger satellite. According to Boeing, ViaSat-3 is the largest satellite in both size and power that it has built.
Viasat has focused even further on putting bandwidth where it’s most needed using beam technology, which transmits signals to a specific geographic area on earth.
“There’s a thread that started with ViaSat-1 and continues to today, and that is putting capacity where people use it,” said Viasat systems engineer Bill Halstrom. “On ViaSat-1, we did that by locating beams where the users were. On ViaSat-2, we did that by moving capacity between existing beams. With ViaSat-3, we’ll actually be moving beams.
“That’s three evolutions of increasing our ability to put capacity where it’s really needed. It’s a big part of our satellite story, and it’s what we’re best at.”
Such flexibility doesn’t come just from the satellites, but the ground network. On the ground, Viasat’s satellite access nodes (SANs) are strategically placed to maximize the capacity and availability of the satellite’s bandwidth –creating a more powerful and reliable network overall.
Viasat’s decision to become a satellite manufacturer has proven enormously successful.
“Twelve years ago, we were not a satellite operator at all,” Dankberg said. “Now we operate all over the world in some of the most exciting applications.”
With the upcoming ViaSat-3 global constellation, Viasat will soon be much bigger.
“The broadband space is going to change very substantially when we continue our shift from U.S. residential to global,” Dankberg said.
“All of this is part of Viasat’s constant evolution.”
“With ViaSat-3, we’re working on the hardest problems we’ve ever worked on” Viasat co-founder and chief technical officer Mark Miller said. “Other managers would look at that and get nervous. Our engineers look at it as a challenge, a challenge that motivates them. And that’s what makes it fun.”