Viasat: we’ll use Inmarsat and GEO satellites to deliver direct-to-handset connectivity

Global satellite company Viasat said a narrowband direct-to-device business using Inmarsat’s L-band spectrum, including from geostationary orbit, is just as viable as the low-orbit constellations being proposed by the likes of SpaceX, Globalstar, Iridium, Lynk Global and AST SpaceMobile.

Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg emphasised GEOsats would complement Inmarsat’s mobile satellite L-band spectrum in providing such a service, if Viasat’s acquisition is approved by UK and EU regulatory authorities in the coming months.

“We’re interested in the direct-to-device market,” he said. “We also see that a lot of the things in space and in the ground network that are done to be able to serve that market. We’re going to really enhance the existing mobile satellite services market.”

He added: “There’s plenty that can be done both at GEO as well as at non-GEO. And so that's what we’re really looking at is a harmonised system between the two, which is something that Inmarsat already started…We do have ambitions to be able to deliver services that are much more interesting than just emergency services and that can be scaled to very large numbers of customers.”

He said the market will be “very large” and addressed by many players, but with probably relatively low average revenue per user. “The big issues or uncertainties around direct to satellite there handset market are really around what are the speeds certainly that can be delivered to each phone, how many phones can you serve in a geographic area and what will the airtime pricing be would be used for more than emergency services,” he said.

“A lot of that…is really going to depend on a lot of the same factors that drive the broadband market, which is…getting signal good density of bandwidth adjusted for the spectrum that it’s operating in the areas where there’s going to be the highest de[1]mand,” he said. “The handset market is probably going to be even more geographical[1]ly concentrated than the broadband markets will be.”

“We’ve actually been looking at design architectures that are both GEO and LEO.

We think they’re both interesting,” he said. “We think that we should be able to deliver pretty comparable services from each. It will probably take cooperation among some of the spectrum holders to achieve that. And we don’t think it’s necessarily a GEO or LEO-speciϐic market.”

Dankberg said he had concerns around the cross-section area and mass of some of the satellites that have been proposed for direct-to-handset LEO services pointing out some of the issues around sustainable space in lower orbit. As operators try to match supply and demand in space communication, reconϐiguring the space system to match was “enormously computationally intensive”, particularly with beam-forming satellites, dropping the power for actual transmission. As a result, smallsats are get[1]ting bigger and bigger as the operators try to get more throughput.

GROUND STATIONS: To overcome this Viasat has invested heavily in cloud datacen[1]tres on the ground to handle the heavy computational work for its ViaSat-3 constella[1]tion – the ϐirst launch, which will cover the Americas, is looking at 8 April while the second, covering Europe and Africa, will be in September. The last, covering Asia Pa[1]ciϐic will come after that.

Each of the three global ViaSat-3 satellites are designed to offer more than 1Tbps of total network capacity to deliver data and video streaming speeds of more than 150Mbps. Each satellite can also support hundreds of aircraft with in-ϐlight connec[1]tivity services and video streaming; provide up to 1Gbps for use in maritime, oceanic and other corporate enterprise and government applications; and offer affordable satellite-based community internet connectivity to unconnected people almost anywhere.

In Australia, Telstra announced it will build and manage the ground infrastructure and ϐibre network for ViaSat-3 in APAC, as part of the 16.5 year contract. Telstra will colocate Viasat’s satellite access node equipment at hundreds of sites and will connect the SAN sites to multiple redundant datacentres that will house the core net[1]working equipment needed to manage the expected increase in data trafϐic. Techni[1]cally, Viasat can operate the ViaSat-3 (APAC) satellite across all of the region using the ground infrastructure located in Australia.

However, there may be regulatory requirements outside Australia that necessitate additional equipment installed in-country.

SPACEX PARTNER: On the company’s analyst call this week, Dankberg was asked whether Viasat would consider SpaceX as a future partner where Viasat could lease a portion of Inmarsat L-band spectrum to SpaceX and partner with them for a direct-to[1]handset services. He did not rule that, or other partnerships, out. “A lot of our value add is in the space systems that we can put together. With any other prospective part[1]ner it would just be an economic trade about what’s the nature of the partnership, who provides which resources or capabilities,” he said. “We don’t rule out partnering with anybody. I think we’ve shown that we can really add value in the space architec[1]tures more than we could just in lease fees for spectrum, as an example. We never say never.”

Simon Dux, Commsday

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