Speaking at the Satellite 2016 conference in Washington D.C. in early March, the Chairman and CEO of Viasat Inc, Mark Dankberg, gave an upbeat assessment of the ability of the satellite communications industry to compete in the consumer broadband market. Dankberg bluntly stated that broadband users want affordable, high bandwidth, on-demand airtime in order to enjoy audio/video content anywhere – either at home or in a mobile situation. As such, Dankberg believes that GEO satellites are the solution. How? By designing a three satellite GEO communications satellite constellation with perhaps a thousand plus narrow beams to deliver his goal of a 1 Tbps (Terabit per second) throughput.
For Dankberg, GEO latency (signal delay) is a secondary issue. Viasat has already ordred two of its planned three Viasat 3 satellites from Boeing.
In addition to the accepted satellite application strong point of meeting low density – off (fibre) network demand, such a satellite constellation could closely target high demand markets. Dankberg gave the example, of a large US airline operating out of dense airport hubs, i.e. many aircraft in one small area, wanting to deliver Netflix to its passengers. Currently the capacity is not there, but Dankberg believes he has the solution.
