The FCC has paved the way for Amazon’s satellite-delivered broadband company, Project Kuiper, and its constellation of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites.

On the same day the House Communications Subcommittee held a hearing on satellite communications tech, the Federal Communications Commission’s International Bureau approved the orbital debris mitigation plan of Kuiper Systems as well as its license modification, which will allow the company to begin deploying birds and ultimately deliver high-speed broadband connectivity.

The FCC’s approval comes with conditions to mitigate collision risk, reliable post-orbit disposal and more.

The FCC back in July 2020 conditionally granted Kuiper's request to operate its broadband satellite system, subject to the approval of its orbital debris mitigation plans. Kuiper filed that plan as a license modification but the FCC still had some issues, now resolved.

Amazon said in December that its first two satellites — Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2 — will be launched on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in early 2023.

The company says it has lined up 92 launches with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin to deploy 3,236 satellites, the largest launch-services purchase in history, Amazon said. ■

OneWeb said it has successfully launched another 40 low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites as it builds a web of broadband birds to deliver high-speed service to the U.S., Europe and Asia.

The launch was courtesy of Elon Musk's SpaceX from Cape Canaveral in Florida. SpaceX has its own StarLink low-latency satellite-broadband play, but that has not prevented Musk’s rocket-launch company from helping competitor OneWeb get its birds into place.

Success means not only launch, but acquiring a signal from all 40 birds, which OneWeb said has happened.

That gives OneWeb a total of 542 satellites, or what it said is more than 80% of its first-generation fleet.

OneWeb is among many such LEO-based satellite broadband efforts the Federal Communications Commission has given its regulatory approval to promote broadband price and service competition; to advance the internet of things (IoT) and 5G for all; and to help close the digital divide in the U.S.

OneWeb’s stated goal is to get broadband to some of the hardest-to-reach areas of the world.

In June 2017, the FCC under then-chair Ajit Pai unanimously approved OneWeb's request to deliver its service in the U.S. market, including particularly hard-to-reach and expensive-to-reach rural areas.

Pai’s successor, Jessica Rosenworcel, also supports LEOs as a way to provide broadband competition.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020, suggesting it was on the verge of getting financing when the pandemic hit. It had already invested billions of dollars in the enterprise.

The company was able to get new funding from, among others, the U.K. government, and emerged from bankruptcy late last year. It secured over $1 billion in launch insurance back in September 2021. ■

Bipartisan leaders in the House Energy & Commerce Committee are praising a pair of new bills that would 1) streamline regulation of satellite broadband buildouts while still providing safety from potential orbital debris and 2) extend terrestrial network security legislation to space.

Committee chair Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), said of the Satellite and Telecommunications Streaming Act: “[W]e must streamline our regulatory processes to unleash innovation while also ensuring our laws fully protect the American public.”

The Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act would direct the Federal Communications Commission to expedite licenses under “measurable and technology-neutral” protections, including collision avoidance, for “space safety and orbital debris.”

Also: Secure Networks Act Passes Senate

It also sets a timetable for the FCC to decide on satellite and earth station applications and allows the agency to automatically grant requests for some times of application modifications.

The Secure Space Act would amend and extend the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act to space by preventing suspect technology providers from accessing to FCC-issued satellite licenses.

The new bill would prevent the FCC from “granting a license or United States market access for a non-geostationary orbit satellite system [the delivery mechanism for satellite broadband] if the license or grant of market access would be held or controlled by an entity that produces or provides any covered communications equipment or service or an affiliate of such an entity.”

"This legislation gives government the keys to ensuring that we continue to lead the world in robust connectivity and in the deployment of new technologies," said FCc Commissioner Nathan Simington. "There is an insatiable hunger for low-latency, high-bandwidth broadband connections in every corner of the U.S. that satellite broadband providers are racing to feed." ▪️

OneWeb said it is about ready to launch another 40 low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites that will help it provide broadband connectivity in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

It said the launch window opens December 6.

The launch will be the company’s 15th and its first since one from India on October 23, when 36 satellites were launched and the signals successfully acquired, OneWeb said.

If successful, the latest launch will push OneWeb’s satellite total to just under 700 LEOs for delivering high-speed broadband service, which the company said is on track to light up next year.

This time, the launch will be from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, a first for OneWeb.

OneWeb is among many such LEO-based satellite broadband efforts the Federal Communications Commission has given its regulatory approval to promote broadband price and service competition, to advance the internet of things (IoT) and 5G for all and to help close the digital divide in the U.S.

OneWeb’s stated goal is to get broadband to some of the hardest-to-reach areas of the world.

In June 2017, the FCC under then-chair Ajit Pai unanimously approved OneWeb's request to deliver its service in the U.S. market, including particularly hard-to-reach and expensive-to-reach rural areas.

Pai’s successor, chair Jessica Rosenworcel, also supports LEOs as a way to provide broadband competition.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020, suggesting it was on the verge of getting financing when the pandemic hit. It had already invested billions of dollars in the enterprise.

The company was able to get new funding from, among others, the U.K. government, and emerged from bankruptcy late last year. It secured over $1 billion in launch insurance back in September 2021. ■

Given, among other things, the rise of satellite-delivered broadband as a potential competitor to terrestrial service, the Federal Communications Commission is creating a new Space Bureau to deal with the growing flock of birds.

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said Thursday (November 3) that the FCC’s International Bureau would be reconfigured as the Space Bureau plus a standalone Office of International Affairs. The goal is to “elevate” the significance of satellite programs and policy at the agency, Rosenworcel said.

Rosenworcel conceded that while the satellite industry is going gangbusters — 64,000 applications for new satellites have been made in the past two years alone — the FCC’s regulatory framework had not kept pace.

She pointed to new players and models — those include the Low Earth Orbit (LEOs) driving the satellite broadband industry and players like SpaceX’s Starlink and OneWeb.

“By separating satellite policy from the ‘International Bureau,’ the agency acknowledges the role of satellite communications in advancing domestic communications policy and achieving U.S. broadband goals,” Rosenworcel’s office said. ▪️

OneWeb and international satellite company Intelsat have struck a deal to target in-flight connectivity.

The distribution agreement allows Intelsat to distribute OneWeb’s low-earth-orbit (LEO) broadband satellite systems to airlines worldwide in tandem with Intelsat's existing geostationary service.

It is being billed as a “multi-orbit solution” to airline broadband that will reduce significant gaps in coverage and/or capacity at hubs and on transoceanic and polar routes for Internet browsing, texting, streaming, cellphone service and email.

The companies say that multi-orbit hybrid coverage should be ready to take off in 2024.

According to a report earlier this month from Verified Market Research, the in-flight connectivity and entertainment market — including hardware and content — is projected to reach over $12 billion by 2030, growing at a rate of over 8% per year. ■

Satellite broadband company OneWeb and French satellite operator Eutelsat, which is already an investor in the company, have proposed a $3 billion-plus merger that will help OneWeb better compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink in the satellite broadband space.

The companies are branding the deal as “creating a genuine global leader in satellite connectivity, future-proofing the company and the U.K.’s asset in a highly competitive market where there is considerable consolidation.”

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and includes both U.S. and European licenses.

They suggested the urge to merge was critical to their future success. “The space industry is moving towards consolidation, and we have acted to ensure we have the right scale, funding and business proposition to enhance our long-term future,” the companies said. “We are guaranteeing the development of our Gen2 satellite network and our ability to go head-to-head with the biggest players across new markets, working with customers and governments in new geographies.”

The all-stock transaction would see shareholders of both companies holding 50% of the newly combined operators under the Eutelsat name.

Eutelsat said it will provide funding to expand OneWeb's low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of broadband satellites.

Eutelsat initially invested in OneWeb in April 2021. 

The Federal Communications Commission approved OneWeb’s satellite broadband service in 2017, one of several such companies, including SpaceX’s Starlink service, that the FCC hopes will provide competition to terrestrial broadband operators.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March 2020 but reorganized later in the year with help from the British government, which took a 33% stake. ■

The Federal Communications Commission has granted the application of Elon Musk's Starlink (SpaceX) satellite broadband company to deliver consumer and business broadband access to planes, boats and automobiles. 

But the regulator said SpaceX must accept any interference from incumbent or future users of the 12-GHz band — and there will likely be a few of those — and can cause no interference of its own to those services.

SpaceX had argued that granting the application would allow it to provide high-quality, low-latency broadband service while still complying with FCC rules and spectrum protections. The FCC appeared to be convinced, saying it agreed with SpaceX that it would be in the public interest to do so. The agency also approved a related on-the-go broadband petition by another satellite broadband provider, Kepler.

The FCC is encouraging low-earth-orbit geostationary satellite broadband systems as competition to existing internet service providers and as a way to reach places too uneconomical for wired ISPs to serve.

SpaceX had applied to deliver service on the go using the 12-GHz band for receive stations. SpaceX is currently trying to dissuade the FCC from allowing that satellite band to be shared with terrestrial wireless 5G, arguing it poses an unacceptable interference risk.

Dish Network, among a handful of others, had opposed the applications saying that neither SpaceX nor Kepler could show that their operations could comply with FCC rules. But the FCC said, “We agree with SpaceX and Kepler that their proposed … operations on an unprotected, nonharmful interference basis in the 12 GHz band will not materially impact the interference environment in that band.”

The FCC did impose some conditions. “These services, never before available, promise the potential for expanding reach to remote and rural areas and facilitating higher quality broadband services in the air, on the road, and on the water,” the commission said, adding, “We recognize, however, that the introduction of a potentially significant number of additional end users could affect the 12 GHz spectrum environment.”

Those conditions include that the authorization is granted on a “non-interference protected” basis, meaning it must take an interference punch, as explained above, but cannot dish one out. The FCC said the applications are subject to changes depending on how it finally resolves the 12-GHz 5G/WiFi sharing proceeding. ▪️

Elon Musk's SpaceX (Starlink) and OneWeb, each of which are deploying competing low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite systems for delivering broadband, have told the FCC in a joint letter that they have come up with a coexistence plan.

The Federal Communications Commission had authorized both companies to launch service in 2016, and both have applied for second-generation systems.

“After extensive good-faith coordination discussions, the Parties are happy to inform the Commission that they agree that their respective first-round systems can efficiently coexist with each other and that their respective second-round systems can also efficiently coexist with each other while protecting their respective first-round systems,” the companies wrote.

SpaceX and OneWeb both asked the FCC to quickly approve their respective second-round applications, saying their agreement negates all prior comments either party had made.

The FCC, under both Republican and Democratic chairs, has been supportive of nascent satellite broadband providers looking to compete with terrestrial ISPs using clusters of small non-geostationary satellites.

Other companies it has given the green light to include Space Norway and Telesat. ■

Republicans and Democrats have teamed on two bipartisan bills that would help streamline the FCC's vetting of satellite-delivered broadband systems looking to provide competition to wired ISPs as well as reach uneconomical-to-wire areas.

Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Republican ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) have circulated drafts of two satellite-related bills that would "modernize" the FCC's satellite licensing rules with the aim of "promoting responsible space management, incentivizing investment and innovation, and advancing U.S. leadership in next-generation, satellite communications networks," all with an eye toward promoting broadband competition and national security.

"As leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee, we must streamline our regulatory processes to usher in a new era of American innovation and investment in this growing sector, particularly as our economic competitors like China race to dominate this industry, and must ensure our laws and regulations fully protect the public," McMorris and Pallone said in a joint statement.

The Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act would require the FCC to come up with performance requirements, space safety and orbital debris requirements for satellite licenses, give the FCC a year deadline to act on an application for a constellation of satellites and earth stations and 180 days to act on a renewal.

There are also some specific benchmarks the licensee must meet to earn a public interest determination, which is always part of the FCC vetting process. Those are 1) that the license does not cause harmful interference "with another licensee," 2) that it doesn't diminish the efficiency of spectrum of a functionally equivalent service; 3) that it does not adversely impact competition among functionally equivalent services, and 4) that, if it is a retail mass market broadband service, it will provide service "to the largest economically feasible number of users."

The Secure Space Act addresses national security issues. It would amend the Secure Trusted Communications Networks Act to prohibit the FCC from granting a license for satellite constellations "if the license or grant of market access would be held or controlled by an entity that produces or provides any covered communications equipment or service or an affiliate of such an entity, and for other purposes." Covered communications or services -- particularly tech tied to Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei -- are ones the government has determined pose a threat to the supply chain and national security.

“The final frontier is home to an emerging constellation of satellites that are offering high-speed Internet services," said FCC commissioner Brendan Carr of the new drafts. "That is great news for American consumers because it provides them with even more choice and competition for their broadband dollars. We need to ensure that America continues to attract the jobs and investments that flow from these innovative operations. And that is why I applaud the bipartisan work of Leader Rodgers and chairman Pallone. Their draft bills would strengthen America’s space-based leadership by further streamlining the licensing process and advancing the security of satellite systems.” ■

Continuing to focus on higher-speed, higher-volume services tailored for video streaming and other bandwidth-intensive apps, Viasat said almost 100,000 of its satellite broadband subs are now on its relatively new premium, unlimited plans.

Subs on those plans are using the company’s ViaSat-1 satellite and its newer, high-capacity ViaSat-2 satellite, which was launched into orbit almost a year ago and placed into service in February with the debut of a new 100 Mbps (downstream) Platinum tier in select regions. By comparison, about 43,000 subs were on those test plans (and only on ViaSat-1) at the end of Viasat’s fiscal Q3.

RELATED: Viasat Launches 100 Mbps ‘Platinum’ Tier with Unlimited Data

Viasat ended its fiscal Q4 with about 576,000 satellite broadband subs, just 1,000 fewer than it had at the end of Q3. However, those losses were offset by ARPU growth, which rose 8% year-on-year, to a record high of $71.06, reflecting an improved mix of new and existing subs picking premium service plans and value-added services, the company said.

“We're rapidly growing the number of subscribers on ViaSat-2,” Mark Dankberg, Viasat’s CEO, said Thursday on the company’s earnings call. “We currently have tens of thousands of subscribers on ViaSat-2 and network performance has largely been quite good.”

He said he expects that trend to accelerate, but acknowledged that the ViaSat-2’s antenna issue “does present some complications” and has caused delays to the rate at which Viasat can expand geographic coverage of the affected beams and add more customers to the new satellite.

That issue, discovered after ViaSat-2 was launched, impairs anticipated data performance in some cases. The preliminary estimated throughout for ViaSat-2 was 300 Gbps, but the issue has reduced that expectation by about 14%, or 260 Gbps.

RELATED: Viasat Downplays Antenna Issue Impacting ViaSat-2’s Data Performance

“We're taking a number of measures to adapt to the effects introduced by the antenna issue, we're continuing to compensate through technical, business and operational means,” Dankberg said. “Those measures will evolve over the next few months.”

For now, Viasat is not providing net add guidance on subscribers as it moves ahead with offering plans that offer more bandwidth.

Dankberg said the company is still aiming to have the first ViaSat-3 satellite in service in the second half of calendar year 2020. That satellite, to enhance coverage in the Americas, will be part of a set of satellites that will help Viasat also extend its reach in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions.

For Q4, Viasat had revenues of $439.7 million, up 2.3%, and a net loss of $19.9 million (34 cents per share). 

Eutelsat said it’s going with Thales Alenia Space on a new high-capacity broadband satellite that replaces a joint investment Eutelsat had with Viasat for a satellite that was to cover Europe, Africa and the Middle East.  

The new order is for a next-gen satellite system called Konnect VHTS (Very High Throughput Satellite) that will deliver fixed broadband and in-flight connectivity but isn’t slated to enter service until 2021. The new 6.3 ton satellite will support Ka-band capacity of 500 Gbps, they said.  

RELATED: Broadband’s Space Race Heats Up  

Thales is also on board to develop a satellite and ground segment to support the new satellite.  

Tied in, the project will come with a multi-year distribution commitment from Orange and Thales, including a retail partnership with Orange for Europe’s fixed broadband market, and one with Thales that’s focused on the government services market.  

The new agreement replaces a joint investment with Viasat for a ViaSat-3 satellite for that portion of the world. Eutelsat noted that its investment in Konnect VHTS is covered by its capex plan that averages €420 million (US$514.71 million) per annum.  

ViaSat, which has launched services on its new ViaSat-2 satellite, has already started the construction phase on a new system of three satellites (collectively referred to as ViaSat-3) that will give the company global coverage and access to more than 1 Tbps of network capacity per satellite. Under that plan, the first ViaSat-3 satellite is slated for a 2020 launch and to enhance coverage in the Americas, with a second one, for the EMEA region, to be launched about six months later. A third is planned for coverage in the Asia Pacific region.  

RELATED: Viasat Launches 100 Mbps ‘Platinum’ Tier with Unlimited Data 

In a statement, Viasat president and COO Rick Baldridge confirmed that it will not be moving forward with Eutelsat on a deal for use of the ViaSat-3 satellite, citing Eutelsat’s “decision to pursue a local market alternative.”

“As we commented previously, negotiations on the ViaSat-3 deal were highly complex,” Baldridge added. “While we had hoped to reach an agreement on new capacity over Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), we were never able to get over some of the fundamental principles. “  

Viasat, he said, “remains excited about its ViaSat-3 program for EMEA, which is well underway on track,” adding that the company believes there’s “significant interest in the program from prospective regional partners.”  

He added that the news involving ViaSat-3 has “no direct impact on existing contracts,” as the joint venture, which has been in operation for more than a year, will continue to be governed under the existing agreements. Additionally, Viasat’s joint ownership of the KA-SAT satellite is currently serving Viasat’s commercial aviation and government customers as well as direct-to-home residential subscribers throughout Europe.  

Baldridge also noted that there was no binding agreement with Eutelsat for the ViaSat-3 EMEA satellite, and that Viasat’s capital plan is not depending on Eutelsat’s participation to proceed with the ViaSat-3 program.  

Viasat shares dropped $3.29 (4.91%) Thursday, closing at $63.75 each.   

The FCC has authorized Elon Musk’s SpaceX to move ahead with an ambitious plan to offer broadband service via a constellation of 4,425 low earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

FCC said the action would pave the way for increasing access to reliable, high-speed internet services in the U.S. and boost competition with other providers.

The FCC granted approval for those satellites to use frequencies in the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) bands with conditions that SpaceX follow Commission rules and to put up protections for other operations in those bands.

The green light to SpaceX follows other recent approves given by the FCC to OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat to provide broadband service in the U.S. using a next-generation of non-geostationary satellite systems.

The approval also comes a bit more a month after SpaceX launched two demonstration Starlink satellites tied to its LEO broadband satellite initiative.

It also marks another step in what has become a broadband space race of sorts in a market that is heating up and growing.

RELATED: Broadband Space Race Heats Up

Viasat, for example, recently launched 100 Mbps (downstream) service that uses ViaSat-2, a high-capacity GEO satellite launched last year. EchoStar’s Hughes Network Systems division has reached the preliminary design phase on Jupiter 3 (EchoStar XXIV), another high-capacity satellite that will be capable of delivery 100 Mbps or more. Eutelsat Communications has tapped Tyvak International to build a LEO satellite that’s designed to support Internet of Things-focused apps and services.

SpaceX’s plan met some opposition. Telesat Canada and Viasat, for example, filed petitions to deny SpaceX’s application over concerns about the potential for in-line interference. EchoStar and Hughes Network Systems also brought up concerns about risks of interference to space-to-Earth links that Hughes uses in the U.S.

OneWeb asks for a condition that SpaceX’s application be conditioned by the maintaining a 125 kilometer altitude buffer zone between its constellation and others. “Imposition of such a zone could effectively preclude the proposed operation of SpaceX’s system, and OneWeb has not provided legal or technical justification for a buffer zone of this size,” the FCC said.

While SpaceX agreed that, given the number of satellite systems that will be launched in the coming years, physical coordination between systems could be required. However, it stressed that the tolerances of specified orbital parameters provide enough flexibility to achieve necessary spacing between satellites.

The FCC said its technical review found that sharing will be possible between the SpaceX system, the OneWeb system, and others proposed in all the bands requested by SpaceX, adding that Earth stations communicating with the SpaceX constellation will have directional antennas.

Still, a statement from FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel outlined some concerns that while these new satellite broadband initiatives are “undeniably exciting,” the regulatory frameworks around those efforts are “dated.”

She called on a “comprehensive polity to mitigate collision risks” amid these plans to launch thousands of LEO satellites, and stressed that the FCC should coordinate more closely with others in the government “to figure out what our national policies are for this jumble of new space activity.”

On that point, she said the FCC should have a seat at the table at the National Space Council as it considers policy changes to promote the growth of the commercial space industry.

“Cutting the FCC out of this discussion is an unseemly mistake—and one that deserves a fix,” she stated.

When it comes to the next generation of broadband services, fiber-based gigabit networks and 5G-enabled fixed wireless networks have drawn much-deserved attention. But satellite broadband services and integrated satellite and terrestrial services are becoming potent new sources of competition to the benefit of both residential consumers and enterprise customers.

Advanced geostationary orbit and emerging non-geostationary orbit fixed-satellite broadband providers are fast approaching the ability to reach residential consumers nationwide with high speeds. Competing fixed-satellite broadband services are increasingly offering consumers and businesses access with 25 Mbps, 50 Mbps, and even 100 Mbps download speeds. Near-future satellite broadband technologies are anticipated to reach terabit-level speeds.

According to the FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report, at the end of 2016, about 92.3% of the U.S. population had access to fixed broadband Internet access services offering speeds of 25Mbps/3Mbps for uploads and downloads. Fixed broadband service coverage numbers rose to 95.6% of the population when satellite broadband services are included. Importantly, fixed-satellite broadband services have the potential to quickly close the broadband coverage gap almost entirely and to give consumers who already have access to broadband services new competitive choices.

Since 2017, the FCC rightly has encouraged satellite broadband services, including by granting new market entrant applications and by streamlining satellite service rules. Going forward, the Commission should continue making expeditious approval of satellite-based broadband services a priority. The Commission should follow through with its ongoing effort to streamline rules. Also, the Commission should reduce processing delays and at all times seek to make suitable spectrum available in a timely fashion for new satellite technologies and services, for example, like Ligado’s proposed service to use satellite-terrestrial spectrum on an integrated basis to serve primarily industrial enterprises.

Emerging Competition from Geostationary Orbit Fixed-Satellite Broadband Services: HughesNet and ViaSat
The Satellite Industry Association’s 2017 report indicates that there were nearly two million residential subscribers to geostationary fixed satellite broadband services at the end of 2016. The FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report called specific attention to geostationary fixed-satellite broadband services offered by Hughes Network Systems and ViaSat: “The 2017 launches of the high throughput Jupiter 2 and ViaSat 2 satellites by Hughes and ViaSat, respectively, could further increase 25 Mbps/3 Mbps satellite offerings in the future.”

HughesNet is currently the largest provider of residential fixed broadband service, with approximately 1 million subscribers in 2017. In March of 2017, HughesNet deployed its advanced EchoStar XIX satellite, thereby doubling the capacity of its prior satellite configuration. Hughes’ reply comment in the FCC’s broadband progress report proceeding stated the EchoStar XIX enables it “to deliver broadband-defined speeds of 25/3 Mbps for residential users and 55/5 Mbps for enterprise users across the continental United States.”

Meanwhile, Hughes is planning an early 2021 launch of its EchoStar XXIV/JUPITER 3 ultra-high density satellite, which “will provide residential and commercial Internet and data services, including in-flight Internet and network backhaul for remote cellular towers.” It is reported that the Echostar XXIV/JUPITER 3 will have a total throughput of 500 gigabits per second.

At the end of 2017 ViaSat had about 577,000 residential subscribers to its broadband service, according to a quarterly earnings report. On February 2 of this year, ViaSat announced the availability of its fastest residential broadband service to date. Enabled by ViaSat-2 (pictured), its latest generation satellite, the new satellite broadband service has advertised speed tiers reaching 25 Mbps, 50 Mbps, and 100 Mbps in download speeds.

Via-Sat’s new satellite broadband service is available across the nation and offers unlimited data for all of its plans. A San Diego Union-Tribune story indicates that ViaSat intends to be competing with HughesNet and is also “positioning its service as a higher speed alternative to DSL offerings.” And ViaSat’s future plans include the launch of its ViaSat-3 satellite, which potentially will offer 1 terabit per second download speeds.

Emerging Competition from Non-Geostationary Fixed-Satellite Broadband Services: OneWeb, Space Norway, Telesat and SpaceX
The FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report also highlighted recent agency efforts to close the digital divide by promoting non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) fixed-satellite services with purported terabit-level speed capabilities. In June 2017, for instance, the Commission granted market access to SoftBank-backed OneWeb for its NGSO system. The Commission also granted NGSO applications by Space Norway and Telesat in 2017.

According to the FCC’s OneWeb Order, OneWeb’s system is set to consist of “a constellation of 720 satellites evenly distributed in 18 near-polar orbital planes, at an approximate altitude of 1200 kilometers.” OneWeb intends to use its system of numerous low-orbit satellites “to provide high-speed, affordable broadband connectivity to anyone, anywhere” in the United States, with launches planned for 2018 and 2019. Reports indicate that OneWeb’s plans include “connecting every unconnected school” by the year 2022. OneWeb’s first satellite constellation is projected to reach speeds of seven terabits per second, with successive constellations reaching significantly higher speeds.

Meanwhile, Space Norway’s planned “Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) system consists of two satellites in one orbit,” which would provide fixed broadband service coverage to unserved and underserved residential customers in the Artic region of the United States. Additionally, Telesat was “permitted to access the U.S. market using a proposed constellation of 117 satellites,” and thereby “enhance competition among existing and future” fixed-satellite broadband services.

Furthermore, on February 14, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai proposed that the Commission grant the application of Elon Musk’s SpaceX “to provide broadband services using satellite technologies in the United States and on a global basis.” Reportedly, SpaceX would deliver fixed-satellite broadband services using “4,425 satellites in non-geostationary orbit traveling in a tightly choreographed ballet 700 miles above the surface of the Earth.”

The FCC Should Continue Promoting Satellite-Based Broadband Technologies
The FCC’s 2018 Broadband Progress Report indicates that “[a]s of year-end 2016… over 24 million Americans still lack fixed terrestrial broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.” Also, 30.7% of Americans in rural areas as well as 35.4% of Americans on Tribal lands lacked access to fixed terrestrial broadband with speeds of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.”

Fixed-satellite broadband services – including those briefly surveyed above – can provide an important solution for reaching unserved and underserved areas. Furthermore, fixed satellite broadband platforms can offer additional, competing choices to residential consumers and businesses in those areas already covered by wireline broadband networks and soon to be covered by 5G fixed wireless networks.

Moreover, advanced satellite-based broadband technologies are necessary to fully enable the Internet-of-Things. Satellite services will be essential for transmitting geo-location information to vehicles as well as for transmitting other data to myriad types of smart devices and equipment. Pending before the Commission, for example, is Ligado’s proposed service, which would use satellite capability in combination with a terrestrial network to deliver smart device communications.

If approved, the service would primarily support transportation, energy, electric utility, and public safety industry sectors. Ligado’s proposal, which depends on the use of mid-band spectrum in the 1-2 GHz range, was filed at the Commission back in December 2015. And the public comment period concluded in August 2016. Unless and until the FCC resumes its review process and approves the proposal, valuable mid-range spectrum resources will continue to go unused and generate no economic or other public benefits.

In sum, satellite technologies are poised to become increasingly important competitors in the next-generation broadband services market and essential facilitators of the Internet of Things. Accordingly, the FCC should build on its recent track record of promoting fixed-satellite broadband services. Indeed, prompt approval of new services using satellite-based technologies should remain a top priority. Streamlining of satellite service-related rules and clearing spectrum for commercial usage by satellite services should also remain imperatives.

Seth L. Cooper is senior fellow at the Free State Foundation, a Rockville, Md.-based think tank promoting free-market public policies.

Hughes Network Systems, a unit of EchoStar, said it has enhanced the capability of its Jupiter broadband satellite platform and made progress with its work with OneWeb, an initiative that is developing a constellation of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites for broadband.

On the Jupiter front, Hughes said it has doubled the throughput of HT2xxx terminals, to more than 200 Mbps, which, for example, will bring more data capacity to the Jupiter Aero System, which delivers more than 600 Mbps to each aircraft that’s served.

RELATED: Broadband’s Space Race Heats Up

The Jupiter System, which has also added an in-route prioritization scheme for faster browsing for encrypted web pages and apps like automatic tellers, is currently deployed on more than 20 satellites round the world.

Hughes, which times the announcement with the Satellite 2018 show, is also working on Jupiter 3 (EchoStar XXIV), a high-capacity satellite that will be capable of delivery 100 Mbps or more. That satellite is expected to enter service sometime in 2021.

For the OneWeb project, Hughes’s gateways include multiple tracking antennas to support operation and handoff of traffic to and from the coming LEO satellites. Hughes said each gateway will be able to handle up to 10,000 terminal hand-offs per second.

Hughes said the shipment is the first of 40 gateways that will support OneWeb, factoring into a $190 million contract announced in November 2017.

February was a busy month in the world of satellite broadband as a new speedy service was launched, a pair of demo satellites were slung into low earth orbit, and another high-capacity bird took a step toward the launch pad.

-The most significant of these was this week’s launch of a new 100 Mbps (downstream) service from Viasat that enters play roughly nine months after the satellite that is beaming that capacity, ViaSat-2, was launched from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard Arianspace’s Ariane 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle and placed into geosynchronous orbit.

While the new offering will provide unlimited data (customers could see slower speeds in period of congestion after they exceed a monthly soft data ceiling), it’s not cheap either – offered at a promotional price of $150 per month that rises to $200 per month after three months.

-EchoStar’s Hughes Network Systems division said it has reached the preliminary design phase on Jupiter 3 (EchoStar XXIV), another high-capacity satellite that will be capable of delivery 100 Mbps or more. Service on Jupiter 3 isn’t expected to start until 2021.

-A week ago (February 22), Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched two “demonstration” Starlink satellites that are part of an effort to eventually offer broadband using a constellation of thousands of LEO satellites.

Musk also tweeted an update as those two satellites – called Tintin A and Tintin B -- were deployed, later joking that the WiFi passwords for them is “martians”:

First two Starlink demo satellites, called Tintin A & B, deployed and communicating to Earth stations pic.twitter.com/TfI53wHEtz

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2018

In addition to providing extensive broadband coverage, the LEO approach aims to also cut down one of the issues that’s typical of satellite broadband: latency.

Despite SpaceX’s high-flying ambitions,The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the complexities of the project could play a role in extending the timetable, and that SpaceX still doesn’t have a good fix on what the ultimate costs will be.

Though SpaceX hasn’t announced a new schedule, the current, tentative goal is to start “limited service by 2020 now appears unrealistic,” the paper added, also citing documents from 2015 suggesting that Musk & Co. had projected that the satellite broadband biz is in position to have more than 40 million subs and pull down more than $30 billion in revenues by 2025.

-OneWeb, another LEO-focused satellite broadband initiative backed by investors such as Intelsat, Virgin Qualcomm, SoftBank and Hughes, hasn’t broken any news lately, though Hughes did note that it’s providing gateway equipment for OneWeb’s ground network under a contract currently worth $300 million, and that it might pursue rights to offer service on OneWeb’s network. OneWeb, which has plans to launch hundreds of light, mass-production satellites, plans to support more than 7 Tbps of total capacity in the first phase of the system.

Given the launch of a new 100-meg consumer broadband service, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg was making the rounds in the media. And, as you might expect, he was asked to weigh in on the competitive threat posed by projects like SpaceX’s.

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, he said SpaceX will present competition “eventually…if they can build a few hundred or a thousand more of them and get them into space.”

Though LEO constellations promise to deliver lower latencies, he also held that Viasat’s use of satellites in geosynchronous orbit bring other benefits.

Larger, geosynchronous satellites like Viasat’s, he said, are placed into fairly safe orbits that don’t change with respect to the Earth or to other GEO satellites. By comparison, LEO systems will be more complex – there will be many more of them, and they will be constantly moving irrespective to each other and to the Earth.

Dankberg agreed there’s some sorting out needed with respect to security and privacy issues when asked what would happen if international law fell behind the pace of technology.

“That is a big issue, and there’s really no global agency that’s dealing with that,” he said.

He also shed some light on the economics of Viasat’s business. Though people make a big deal about launch prices, it’s not the most expensive part of the equation, compared to the satellite itself and the extensive ground fiber network that underpins the system.

[Images: Top (left to right): Renderings of the ViaSat-2 satellite and OneWeb low-earth orbit satellite. Bottom (left to right): The Arianspace Ariane 5 launch vehicle, and SpaceX's Falcon 9 two-stage rocket.]

Just weeks after deeming ViaSat-2, a new high-capacity satellite, ready for service, Viasat has introduced new unlimited, residential data speed tiers, including a top-end offering that delivers up to 100 Mbps downstream.

RELATED: ViaSat-2 Satellite Deemed ‘Ready for Service’

Viasat’s new high-end tier, called Unlimited Platinum 100 and optimized for HD video streaming, carries an introductory price of $150 per month (with in-home WiFi included), and rises to $200 per month after three months. Viasat said Platinum 100’s 100 Mbps downstream is paired with upstream speeds up to 3 Mbps.

Here’s how Viasat’s other unlimited satellite broadband tiers stack up (all come with built-in WiFi):

 -Unlimited Bronze 12: Up to 12 Mbps, starting at $50 per month ($70 per month after three months)

-Unlimited Silver 25: Up to 25 Mbps, starting at $70 per month ($100 per month after three months)

-Unlimited Gold 50: Up to 50 Mbps, starting at $100 per month ($150 per month after three months)

As video streaming goes, Viasat notes that the 12 Mbps typically delivers 360p (small screen quality), compared to 25 Mbps (DVD quality, typically 480p), 50 Mbps (HD, typically 720p), and 100 Mbps (“Full” HD, typically 1080p).

With the new unlimited plans, Viasat is also leaning on new technologies aimed to optimize the bandwidth required for video streaming while also removing hard monthly data caps with unlimited offerings that vary based on location.

Per some of the fine print, once data usage exceeds certain levels on certain speed tiers (40 Gigabytes on the 12-Meg tier; 60 GB on the 25-Meg offering; 100 GB on the 50-Meg tier; and 150 GB on the 100-Meg tier), Viasat “may prioritize your data behind other customers during network congestion.” When such congestion isn’t present, service will continue “based on availability” for customers who exceed their monthly data plan.

RELATED: Viasat to Sunset ‘Exede,’ ‘WildBlue’ and ‘Yonder’ Sub-Brands

In preparation for service on the new ViaSat-2 satellite, Viasat has been testing unlimited plans (along with the video stream management system) on its legacy Viasat-1 platform. By the end of its last financial quarter, about 43,000 subscribers were on those test plans on ViaSat-1. Viasat ended its fiscal Q3 with about 577,000 subscribers.

On the residential end, Viasat is expected to focus its new offerings on underserved areas, including those where DSL speeds leave something to be desired. In addition to supporting services with higher ARPU, Viasat said ViaSat-2 will also support its efforts in other verticals, including in-flight broadband and in the business and government markets.

Viasat is also launching the new tiers on ViaSat-2 amid growing competition in the satellite broadband sector.

EchoStar’s Hughes Networks Systems unit, for example, has reached the preliminary design phase on Jupiter 3, a new broadband satellite that will be capable of delivering speeds of 100 Mbps-plus across a footprint covering the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and other countries in South America. Hughes is also involved in OneWeb, a platform that will use a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to deliver services into rural areas, and counts Intelsat, Virgin Qualcomm, SoftBank and Hughes among its investors. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, meanwhile, plans to provide broadband coverage using thousands of low-earth orbit satellites, and put two demonstration satellites into orbit tied to that initiative last week.

"Today's service launch is an important step forward in Viasat's mission to deliver faster internet anywhere,” Mark Dankberg, Viasat’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “The innovations we're making across our satellite system allow us to do extraordinary things, from moving the satellite industry up-market by delivering premium services, speeds and plans that give consumers new choices in their internet service provider, to helping bridge the digital divide in the U.S. today."

Viasat’s debut of new data tiers and unlimited plans comes roughly nine months after the launch of ViaSat-2, a Boeing-built high-capacity satellite, from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard Arianspace’s Ariane 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle.

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

ViaSat-2 was designed to provide 300 Gbps of total throughput, but an antenna issue that emerged following the launch could reduce the data performance of the satellite by about 14% (or 260 Gbps) However, Viasat, which is working to resolve the issue, doesn’t believe it will affect its financial modeling around ViaSat-2.

RELATED: Viasat Downplays Antenna Issue Impacting ViaSat-2’s Data Performance

As ViaSat-2 gets into service, Viasat has entered the construction phase on a new system of three satellites, referred to collectively as ViaSat-3, that will give the company global coverage, and access to more than 1 Terabit per second of network capacity per satellite.

The launch of the first satellite for ViaSat-3 is slated for 2020 and enhance coverage in the Americas, followed a second one for the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region about six months later, and a third that’s planned to provide coverage in the Asia Pacific region.

EchoStar’s Hughes Networks Systems unit is making progress on a new broadband satellite that will be capable of delivering speeds of 100 Mbps-plus across a footprint covering the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and other countries in South America.

Hughes has tapped Space Systems Loral to build the high-density satellite, called Jupiter 3 (or EchoStar XXIV). The project is in the “preliminary design phase,” with the design review milestone expected to be complete by the first half of 2018, Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes, said Thursday on EchoStar’s Q3 earnings call.

Service on Jupiter 3 is expected to launch in 2021, and complement the Jupiter 1 and 2 satellites, while also providing some capacity and coverage for the Eutelsat 65 West satellite and Telesat 19V.

RELATED: Looking for Powerful Liftoff (subscription required)

Kaul noted that beam coverage from Jupiter 3 will be optimized where it anticipates the most demand, rather than going with an approach that provided uniform blanket coverage. The satellite itself will serve all of Hughes’s traditional markets, such as consumer, enterprise, cellular backhaul and community WiFi.

Hughes and EchoStar are pushing ahead with Jupiter 3 amid increased competition from Viasat, which is nearing the launch of services on ViaSat-3, a broadband satellite that will deliver speeds of 100 Mbps or more and support unlimited data plans.

RELATED: ViaSat-2 Satellite Deemed ‘Ready for Service’

As Hughes works on Jupiter 3, it’s satellite broadband customer numbers continue to rise almost a year after the service debut of its Gen5 offering that can deliver speeds of up to 25 Mbps downstream, and 3 Mbps upstream.

EchoStar/Hughes added about 68,000 satellite broadband subs in Q4, up from 18,000 in the year-ago period, ending the year with about 1.2 million, a number that includes retail, wholesale and business customers.

Hughes is also involved in OneWeb, a platform that will use a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to deliver services into rural areas, and counts Intelsat, Virgin Qualcomm, SoftBank and Hughes among its investors.

RELATED: FCC OKs OneWeb Satellite Broadband Service

In addition to its investment, Hughes is also providing gateway equipment for OneWeb’s ground network under a contract that, so far, totals more than $300 million.

Though Hughes’s relationship with OneWeb is currently hardware-centric, it’s also working on other arrangements that would give Hughes rights to offer services on OneWeb’s LEO network, Anders Johnson, chief strategy officer and president of EchoStar Satellite Services, said.

Though ViaSat-2, Viasat’s new broadband satellite, is deemed “ready for service,” a technical hiccup could reduce the overall data performance of the satellite by about 14%.

RELATED: ViaSat-2 Satellite Deemed ‘Ready for Service’

An antenna issue, detected after the launch last June and one that’s being investigated by Viasat and Boeing, could reduce the capacity of ViaSat-2 to 260 Gbps, rather than the original expectation of 300 Gbps, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg noted on last week’s earnings call.

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

That issue caused some spot beams to perform differently than they did during ground testing, SpaceNews reported in January. However, Viasat said then that it believed that the antenna issue would not impact coverage area of the new satellite or materially impact plans services and expected financial results from the ViaSat-2 system.

ViaSat will soon start to use the new Boeing-built ViaSat-2 satellite (the image with this story is an artist's rendering of it) to help it power services that can deliver up to 100 Mbps (downstream) alongside new unlimited data plans.

“We do have an antenna deployment issue that may degrade capacity compared to the ground tests,” Dankberg explained. “We and the Boeing team are working to characterize the on-orbit performance to estimate the maximum capacity of the satellite. We currently estimate the maximum capacity could be around 260 gigabits when optimized for capacity given the antenna system as we understand it.”

He also offered that there are some “maneuvers” that can be done that might resolve the problem, but also acknowledged that they could make the situation worse. Viasat, he added, is working with Boeing and the insurers “to make sure that we understand the situation and that when we take those actions, they are appropriate.”

That said, Viasat still expects the new satellite will at least double the typical bandwidth as ViaSat-1 and downplayed how the antenna problem will affect the expected financial modeling created around ViaSat-2.

“We didn’t base our business plans on perfection…we had margin in there for problems,” Dankberg said, adding that there are other parts of the network that are working better than planned.

To prepare for the capabilities coming with ViaSat-2, the company has been testing new unlimited plans on the legacy, bandwidth-constrained ViaSat-1 platform, coupled with a “video stream management” system. About 43,000 subscribers (out of about 577,000) were on those test plans on ViaSat-1 at the end of Viasat's fiscal Q3.

Viasat said ViaSat-2, its next-gen broadband satellite, is ready for service as the company prepares to introduce faster speeds – up to 100 Mbps downstream—alongside new unlimited data plans.

Viasat launched the Boeing-built ViaSat-2 satellite last June. Viasat-2, delivered into orbit aboard Arianespace's Ariane 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle, is packed with 300 Gigabits per second of total throughput.

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

“We anticipate launching the service region-by-region, starting as early as next week with national coverage planned for the end of this month,” Mark Dankberg, Viasat’s chairman and CEO, said Thursday on the company’s fiscal Q3 call.

Dankberg reiterated that Viasat’s target market will be somewhat “granular” early on, going after consumers that rely on the internet more for video entertainment, as well as consumers who like to stream video but don’t have access to higher-speed tiers – in the area of 25 Mbps to 50 Mbps – via wireline ISPs.

To prepare, the company has been testing new unlimited plans on the legacy, bandwidth-constrained Viasat-1 platform, coupled with a “video stream management” system. By the end of the quarter, about 43,000 subscribers were on those test plans on ViaSat-1.

Dankberg also talked up ViaSat-2’s flexible bandwidth allocation capabilities, which enables the company to balance the load in the upstream and downstream based on usage patterns and to pump up data to geographic areas where demand is greater.

RELATED: Viasat to Sunset ‘Exede,’ ‘WildBlue’ and ‘Yonder’ Sub-Brands

“With ViaSat-1, we found that downstream bandwidth was a bottleneck,” he said. “We would have traded back some of the upstream that we had left over from more downstream if we could.”  That obstacle will be removed from the equation with ViaSat-2.

In addition to subscriber growth, Viasat also believes that the new satellite will also help it drive  higher average revenues per user, by offering faster speeds and by expanding into new geographies and market verticals. Up to 95% of the bandwidth on ViaSat-1 is allocated for residential broadband, so its ability to poke new markets is extremely limited.

Viasat lost about 12,000 satellite broadband subscribers in fiscal Q3, ending the period with 577,000, but said the loss was partially offset by growth in ARPU.

Regarding potential new markets for ViaSat-2, Dankberg said enterprise customers are a good example, citing Comcast as an example where satellite delivery could help to “fill in sites” that aren’t supported by the MSO’s wireline network.

Viasat is also developing a set of ViaSat-3 satellites that will provide global coverage by enhancing coverage in the Americas and expanding into Europe and the Middle East and Africa regions. That project has transitioned to the construction phase.

Dankberg was also asked to comment on OneWeb, a platform that will use a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites to deliver services into rural areas, and counts Intelsat, Virgin Qualcomm, SoftBank and Hughes among its investors.

RELATED: FCC OKs OneWeb Satellite Broadband Service

Dankberg downplayed the threat posed to Viasat. OneWeb and its use of LEO systems “are definitely interesting from a technology perspective,” he said. “We are not predicting the failure of OneWeb, [but] I just think that it’s not going to bring an amount of bandwidth to the markets that we serve that’s going to disrupt our ability to compete in those markets.”

Viasat also made some progress with its airline-focused business, announcing a new deal with United Airlines that will cover more than 70 aircraft, including at least 58 of the carrier’s Boeing 737MAX planes. That deal includes access to the ViaSat-1, ViaSat-2, and ViaSat-3 platforms. 

During the quarter, Viasat signed contracts for 92 additional aircraft from existing customers, bringing the total of in-service and under-contract plans to just under 1,500, Dankberg said.

Viasat posted a Q3 net loss of $24.6 million on revenues of $381.8 million, flat from year-ago revenues of $380.6 million.

As it pivots to become a global satellite company, Viasat said it will sunset its sub-brands – including Exede and Yonder – as part of a new global brand identify that will be led by the Viasat name along with a new corporate logo.  

Exede has been serving as the brand for Viasat’s consumer satellite broadband service, and Yonder serving as the brand for its Ku-band aviation service. WildBlue is another brand that’s been associated with Viasat’s residential broadband service. Viasat acquired WildBlue in 2009. Viasat will also be phasing out the GoFiFi name (its managed WiFi service), and Arconics (aviation software). Viasat expects to retire those bands in a phased approach over the next six months or so.

RELATED: ViaSat To Acquire WildBlue For $568 Million

“We found we were diluting our own brand by having too many sub-brands,” Steven Mesnick, Viasat’s VP of marketing and pricing, noted in this blog post. “This led us to be highly motivated to rebrand under one master name to restore awareness and capture new opportunities across markets.”

The new logo, designed to be more modern and friendly that its processor, will be applied to new industry sectors being targeted by Viasat, as well as in more international markets.

The newly unified brand comes as Viasat prepares to launch serve on its new high-capacity broadband satellite, ViaSat-2, that will help the company deliver speeds of 100 Mbps and more. The change also comes as the company moves ahead with plans for ViaSat-3, a set of satellites that will give Viasat global coverage.

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

“Our previous brand proudly served Viasat for more than three decades, but as our service portfolio expands both domestically and internationally across consumer, enterprise, aviation and maritime markets, and our defense business continues to defy industry trends, there is greater value for us to present one unified brand to customers and partners around the world,” Mark Dankberg, Viasat’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Drawing on the industry reputation and strength of relationships we’ve built in each segment of our business, we believe one brand can help us grow market and consumer awareness as well as attract the very best talent around the world.”

ViaSat’s consumer satellite broadband business remained under pressure in fiscal Q2 as the company lost customers and continued to be dogged by bandwidth issues as it looks to relieve that situation early next year when a new high-capacity satellite enters service. 

ViaSat ended the period with 589,000 residential subscribers, down 36,000 from the 625,000 it had at the end of its fiscal Q1.

RELATED: EchoStar Hughes Unit Adds 53K Satellite Broadband Subs in Q3

“Our consumer business continues to be constrained by available bandwidth on ViaSat 1 and the legacy satellites, as well as by growth and bandwidth usage in our in-flight connectivity and government applications,” ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg said Wednesday (Nov. 8) on the company’s earnings call.

But a remedy is in play.

ViaSat 2, launched in June from French Guiana, packs 300 Gbps of total throughput, opening the door for ViaSat to offer speeds to individual subs of 100 Mbps or more. The new satellite is expected to enter service in February 2018. In preparation, ViaSat has begun to test several new service plans, including a range of unlimited data plans.

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

“We know when ViaSat 2 enters service, about three months from now…we’ll go from being bandwidth-constrained to a bandwidth-rich environment,” Dankberg said.

He noted that ViaSat has seen demand skew toward higher-priced, higher-speed plans that offer more data usage, driving ARPU up to record levels, and up 9% year-on-year. Its current top-end service, under the “Exede” brand, pumps out up to 25 Mbps in the downstream direction, and implements a broadband-usage policy to keep bandwidth usage in check.

However, churn is also going higher than historical norms, driven by the aforementioned bandwidth constraints.

RELATED: Looking For Powerful Liftoff (subscription required)

“Migrations to newer plans by existing subscribers is obviously closely related to acquiring new ones,” Dankberg said. “We believe that these early migrations will offset subsequent migrations on ViaSat-2 service launch later this fiscal year.”

Dankberg also said that satellite broadband is increasingly well-positioned to support OTT services, including a new mix of live TV options that require more capacity than SVODs like Netflix, and suggested further that the future “may involve partnering with one or more of those service providers.”

RELATED: New Hughes/EchoStar Satellite to Deliver 100 Mbps-Plus

Even before the new bird enters service, ViaSat is also starting to reap some benefits from the capacity it will gain with ViaSat 2. The company also announced that an expanded deal to provide upgraded in-flight internet service to JetBlue aircraft.

The new JetBlue agreement factors in access to ViaSat 2 and a ViaSat 3 project that’s in development. ViaSat 3 will give the company global coverage from a set of satellites, the first of which that will enhance coverage in the Americas and launch in 2019. ViaSat will follow with a satellite covering the EMEA region in 2020, and another that will provide coverage in the Asia Pacific.

With respect to ViaSat’s agreements with JetBlue and others, Dankberg said the company has 576 aircraft in service, and 833 additional under contract.

“We're actively engaged with additional airlines, and expect our progress and investments to generate additional momentum over the rest of this fiscal year,” he said. “Overall, we see more and more airlines understanding that the more passengers that use in-flight connectivity, the better, and that's a great environment for us.”

ViaSat posted Q2 revenues of $399.2 million, down 1.5% year-on-year, and a net loss of $11 million. Satellite services were flat year-on-year accounting for a $6.6 million payment tied to a settlement with Space Systems Loral.

Hughes Network Systems, a unit of EchoStar, tallied 53,000 new satellite broadband subs in Q3 2017, extending that total to 1.14 million and improving on a year-ago decline of 12,000 subs.

As of September 30, Hughes had about 340,000 subscribers on its new Gen5 platform, which delivers up to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. Gen5, which entered service in March, and delivers speeds that are aligned with the FCC’s current definition of “broadband.”

RELATED: Looking For Powerful Liftoff (subscription required)

“We continue to believe that the market for satellite broadband in the United States remains large, and [represents] over 18 million households, with about half of these being unserved and the other half underserved by existing wireline technologies,” Pradman Kaul, Hughes’ CEO and president, said on Wednesday’s earnings call.

He noted that the satellite broadband market here has fewer than 2 million subs, so Hughes still believes that there’s “significant opportunities for material growth” in that segment.

But some analysts aren’t impressed with Hughes's current rate of growth. One on today’s call asked why Hughes hasn’t been able to secure more customers and if more marketing or partnerships were needed to move the needle.

Pradman said Hughes is pleased with its progress, but is also hopeful that those sub numbers will rise more rapidly as it sees improvements in churn.

He said earlier in the call that new Gen5 service has helped to improve churn, and that it’s seeing strong demand in areas covered by DSL.

Michael Dugan, EchoStar’s president and CEO, added that the company is also being careful to ensure that it’s getting the “right consumers” on board.

"We’ve learned some hard lessons from other businesses,” Dugan said. “We could increase the number of gross ads and even net adds, but in the long term some of those subs won’t stick with us. We are very focused on the right sub base.”

Pradman continued to downplay the threat posed to Hughes from fixed wireless broadband services.

“The impact of wireless is limited because as we see growth of LTE and 5G, frequencies they are operating in and the markets they're operating in involved in are not markets we are going into…We continue to go after the unserved and underserved markets, where we don't see an expansion of the 5G and the LTE networks.”

Looking ahead, Hughes has contracted Space Systems Loral to build a next-gen satellite – EchoStar XXIV/Jupiter 3 -- that will enable the company to offer speeds of 100 Mbps or more in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, as well as other parts of South America. 

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

Pradman noted that the new satellite, which isn't expected to launch until early 2021, will use beam coverage to reach areas where it anticipates the most demand, rather than using it for uniform blanket coverage.

“Our new satellite will be the engine that powers our future growth,” he said.

Hughes Network Systems, a unit of EchoStar, said this week it’s eyeing broadband speeds of 100 Mbps and more via new high-density satellite that’s expected to launch in early 2021.

Hughes, which ended Q2 with 1,085,000 satellite broadband subs, has tapped Space Systems Loral to build the next-gen Jupiter 3 bird, which will be designated “EchoStar XXIV.”

The new satellite will target “key markets” across the Americas, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and other countries in South America, and will more than double the Hughes Ka-band capacity in the region, the company said.

Plans for the new satellite come more than two months after ViaSat launched ViaSat2, a high-powered satellite with 300 Gbps of total throughput that will also eye service tiers of 100 Mbps and more. ViaSat 2 is expected to enter into service in early 2018, with services slated to get underway in Q4 of the company’s fiscal 2018.

RELATED: ViaSat 2 Launches With Big Broadband Potential

Hughes launched its HughesNet Gen5 service in March and has been upgrading subs to the speedier platform, which matches a 25 Mbps downstream with a 3 Mbps upstream and is powered by EchoStar XIX/Jupiter 2, a multi-spot-beam, Ka-band satellite made by Space Systems Loral that launched in December 2016.

Though Hughes has largely focused on rural areas, it’s seeing opportunities where DSL service is weak, Peter Gulla, Hughes’s SVP of marketing, told Multichannel News in a recent interview.

RELATED: Looking For Powerful Liftoff (subscription required)

“Right now, 25 [Mbps] seems to be meeting the needs of our customers,” he said at the time. “But that doesn’t mean that’s the end of the line.”

The appeal of satellite broadband services have been limited somewhat by restrictive data caps and latency issues that impair interactive services such as VoIP and multiplayer gaming. In some instances, satellite broadband players are also expected to see more competition from speedier LTE and next-gen 5G-based fixed wireless data offerings.

Hughes president Pradman Kaul downplayed the severity of the 5G threat on EchoStar’s Q2 call.

“The problem is that the amount of bandwidth available at that spectrum is… in smaller pieces of bandwidth,” he said, according to Space Intel Report. They won’t be competing with us directly because we’re going up to 100 megabits per second. In the low end of the spectrum that 5G will be using, that’s not a competitor. Then you go into the millimeter-wave spectrum, the 28-, 30-, 37-GHz pieces. There, the cell sizes are very small, but they will be focused in the urban areas, where we don’t compete.”

ViaSat ended its fiscal Q1 with 625,000 residential broadband subscribers. The company attribute that loss, of about 34,000 subs, to a mix of seasonality, Hughes’s new Jupiter 2 satellite as well as unlimited mobile wireless services.

Kourou, French Guiana — “We have more internets!”

After years of tension and toil, that was the joyful exultation of a ViaSat engineer the night of June 2, nearly 45 minutes after ViaSat 2, a new high-capacity broadband satellite, was successfully launched into orbit aboard an Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket from Arianespace’s facilities in French Guiana.

The new bird, built by Boeing Commercial Satellite Systems, is equipped to deliver a powerful payload of 300 Gigabits per second of total throughput.

ViaSat 2 won’t enter service until early 2018 (ViaSat announced on June 22 that the solar arrays of the new satellite were successfully deployed), but the company is already laying the groundwork to deliver satellite broadband services of 100 Megabits per second or more.

For satellite-delivered broadband, that will represent a major accomplishment. A 100 Megabits-per-second offering would essentially quadruple the maximum downstream speeds now delivered by ViaSat’s current top end “Exede” service, as well as what’s offered by one of its chief rivals, Echo-Star-owned Hughes Network Systems.

“We’re still working on our plans, but we likely will have service plans that are up to 100 Mbps, and we may have some that are as high as 200 Mbps,” Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, said in an interview just hours before the launch, and during a driving rainstorm that, thanks to the lack of lightning, was never truly a threat to scrub the big event. “The satellite’s capable of that. The real issue is how do we price those plans and how many subscribers can we put on them?”

Though a 100 Mbps satellite-delivered broadband service is achievable, Dankberg said he believes most of the company’s subscribers will be on tiers that deliver slower speeds. But the launch of ViaSat 2 will give the company, which has about 659,000 satellite-broadband subscribers, the ability to far exceed what it’s delivering in the U.S. today using a legacy satellite fleet that includes ViaSat 1 and birds acquired in its 2009 acquisition of WildBlue Communications.

In addition to delivering gobs of bandwidth, ViaSat 2, at an orbital location of 22,236 miles above the earth’s equator (at 69.9 degrees west longitude), will enable ViaSat to expand coverage in North America, Central America, the Caribbean and a portion of northern South America. Key transportation routes between North America and Europe also are expected to benefit.

And there’s a lot more to come. “ViaSat has ambitions to be a global broadband services company,” Dankberg said. “This ViaSat 2 launch is a big step along the way for us towards that path.”

Faster and More Competitive
The ability to deliver faster speeds will give ViaSat a way to compete more directly with cable operators, telcos and other wireline internet service providers. But that won’t be the primary focus.

“Our mission is to be a really good choice for the underserved — not necessarily for people who already have access to fiber-to-the-home or the most modern cable [high-speed internet] service,” Dankberg said. “But the qualification I’m going to make to that is, we want to give that same experience to people who otherwise can’t get it.”

ViaSat 2 will help to turn ViaSat into a bigger regional provider of services that will also span government and enterprise customers while also enhancing its ability to deliver high-quality inflight connectivity as well as broadband service to cruise ships.

It will also amp up competition with Hughes Network Systems, which launched its HughesNet Gen5 service in March, and has already added about 100,000 new and upgrading subscribers to the speedier platform, which matches a 25 Mbps downstream with a 3 Mbps upstream. Gen5 is powered by EchoStar XIX/Jupiter 2, a multi-spot-beam, Ka-band satellite made by Space Systems Loral that launched on Dec. 18, 2016, and complements Hughes’s EchoStar XVII and Spaceway 3 data satellites.

Related: Hughes Tees Up Faster Satellite Broadband Service

Hughes, which has about 1.04 million satellite broadband subs and reaches both U.S. continental coasts plus parts of Alaska, believes it’s playing an important role because terrestrial broadband providers are more limited in how rapidly they can expand and generally don’t put a lot of focus on rural areas, according to Peter Gulla, senior vice president of marketing at Hughes.

Gulla said Hughes is also “finding a lot of opportunity” in areas where the telcos are letting their DSL networks languish as many instead focus on new fixed wireless options.

Still, Hughes will keep its target focused mostly on rural areas and where DSL service is weak, rather than applying marketing dollars and other resources in areas where wireline broadband competition is already strong.

“We are starting to see opportunities in the slow DSL areas,” Gulla said. “But you won’t be seeing us dropping a lot of flyers in New York City trying to convince people that they ought to switch to satellite [broadband]. I think we’re being realistic about what our product is and what it’s good for and what it does and what the value is.”

Though ViaSat is getting ready to raise the speed bar for satellite-delivered broadband, Hughes is not yet making any formal commitments to upgrade its capabilities.

“Right now, 25 [Mbps] seems to be meeting the needs of our customers,” Gulla said. “But that doesn’t mean that’s the end of the line.”

Need for Pricing, Data Flexibility
Beyond speed, other issues remain hot-button competitive factors. Among them: Satellite broadband-service providers will need to be more flexible on pricing and support relaxed data policies if they are to have much success in their traditional markets, even as some of them look to extend beyond rural regions, Jeff Heynen, consulting director and analyst at Kagan, said. Strict and complicated usage caps and data plans have long been sticking points for the satellite services.

Related: FCC OKs OneWeb Satellite Broadband Service

Under policies for ViaSat’s current Exede service, for instance, subscribers get a fixed amount each month of “Priority Data” at speeds of up to 12 Mbps to 25 Mbps, and, once those data buckets are used up, it pivots to slower speeds — between 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps. For its higher-end tiers, ViaSat also supports an unmetered “Free Zone” from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., when traffic tends to be the lightest. ViaSat also lets customers purchase more Priority Data for $10 per gigabyte, or discounts if they purchase buckets of 5 GB, 7 GB or 10 GB.

“In the past, most satellite services that are consumer priced have had hard limits to the amount of bandwidth that you can use,” Dankberg acknowledged. “We’ve been testing, on ViaSat 1, service plans that are virtually unlimited. With ViaSat 2, we’ll be able to make those more common, lower priced and with higher speeds.”

The HughesNet Gen5 service offers data plans ranging from 10 GB to 50 GB per month, before speeds are reduced to about 1 Mbps to 3 Mbps. It also comes with a “Video Data Saver” option that adjusts the bit rate to deliver video in DVD quality. Those customers still have the ability to watch in HD by toggling off the Video Data Saver capability. HughesNet’s data policy also includes “Bonus Zone” hours (from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.), when the customer can use 50 GB per month of free data rather than pulling it from their monthly service plan. HughesNet suggests that Bonus Zone hours are used to download large files such as movies and system updates.

Achieving success in new markets, Heynen of Kagan stressed, will hinge greatly on competitive pricing and the easing of data caps as they face off with competition from wireline internet service providers, as well as emerging LTE- and 5G-powered fixed wireless options that will be capable of delivering hundreds of Megabits of data per second and possibly Gigabit-class speeds.

“As people use more data and OTT, they are going to be very wary of pushing the boundaries of those data caps,” Heynen said. “They have to find a way to make the data caps as well as the monthly pricing reasonable for the service.”

AT&T, for example, is pushing ahead with a big rollout of fixed LTE services. “Out in those rural areas, LTE is a potential competitive threat,” Heynen said, noting that he doesn’t expect satellite broadband to continue to have the most success in its traditional focus areas, serving areas instead without much landline broadband and servicing airplanes and cruise ships.

“I don’t see the cost structure allowing [satellite broadband ISPs] to compete with a traditional DSL, cable or fiber service,” he said. However, he said he does believe satellite broadband services that are equipped with 100 Mbps capability can offer a “reasonable alternative,” particularly as DSL service struggles to deliver speeds any greater than 25 Mbps.

Licking the Latency Issue
Though satellite broadband is poised to deliver speeds that can match up with some of its earthbound rivals, the issue that’s toughest to overcome is latency, which can impact some interactive apps and services such as VoIP and multiplayer gaming.

According to the Federal Communications Commission’s 2016 Measuring Broadband America Fixed Broadband Report, the median latencies of satellite-based broadband services range from 599 milliseconds to 629 milliseconds, versus terrestrial-based broadband services, which range from 12 milliseconds to 58 milliseconds.

“I can’t go against the laws of physics, but I’d like to,” Hughes’s Gulla said. “But the bottom line is that there’s that traveling distance to and from satellite, and at the current distances, you have latency.”

He said Hughes is upfront about that with customers. “We do our best to explain and ask [customers] what they intend to do when they call us. We’re very clear that if you’re doing first-person shooter games, you’re not going to win.”

Other satellite-broadband initiatives are looking to overcome that latency issue.

One prime example is SpaceX, the privately held aerospace firm run by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. USA Today, citing comments from Patricia Cooper, the company’s VP of satellite government affairs, reported that SpaceX is planning to launch 4,425 small satellites via reusable Falcon 9 rockets to support a constellation of lower-latency, low-earth-orbit birds, alongside a proposal for another 7,815 satellites that are even closer to the Earth’s surface.

Additionally, Airbus is planning a fleet of hundreds of small, low-earth-orbit (about 750 miles above the Earth’s surface) satellites in a joint venture with a startup called OneWeb. According to CNN, the joint venture is eyeing one launch every 21 days from French Guiana, with the first expected to lift off in about nine months. Service via the partnership, which includes backing from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Qualcomm and Japan’s SoftBank, is reportedly expected to start in 2019 and to cover the globe by 2020. The FCC approved OneWeb’s request to deliver service in the U.S. in late June.

ViaSat is also casting its eye toward global coverage with its planned set of ViaSat 3 satellites. The first, which will expand and enhance ViaSat’s coverage in the Americas, is planned to launch in 2019, followed in 2020 by a satellite that will cover the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. ViaSat hasn’t announced when it expects to launch its third ViaSat 3 satellite, but it’s slated to provide coverage in the Asia-Pacific region.

The FCC has unanimously approved global satellite-delivered broadband service OneWeb's request to deliver its service in the U.S. market, but with some conditions and caveats.

Agency chair Ajit Pai had proposed granting the permission.

The FCC said OneWeb's petition prompted another potential satellite web service to also ask for access.

The declaratory ruling grants access by 720 satellites to a low-earth orbit satellite system that can reach everywhere in the country. That grant includes access to bands used by other networks.

The grant is conditioned on the outcome of a pending proceeding updating rules for fixed satellite systems, which will establish the final sharing criteria, and another pending item on spectrum sharing.

OneWeb board members include Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and Qualcomm executive chair Paul Jacobs. Investors include Qualcomm, Virgin and Hughes.

Commissioner Michael O'Rielly called the OneWeb plan ambitious, with some questions remaining about the scope of issues like in-line interference and orbital debris. He said he generally agreed with the item, but had concerns about those issues.

He called this a first step and said that the wireless and satellite industries are on a collision course.

Pai said the item was an effort to harness high-speed access for everyone via the non-geostationary plan that could reach the hardest-to-reach areas.

He said the FCC's International Bureau is reviewing those additional asks for spectrum for other satellite broadband efforts and hoped to be able to approve more low-earth geostationary broadband services.

Hughes Network Systems said it is closing in on the launch of HughesNet Gen5, a national satellite Internet service outfitted with monthly data plans that will meet the FCC’s current defined speeds for “broadband” – 25 Mbps downstream by 3 Mbps upstream.

RELATED: FCC Ups Sec. 706 Broadband Speed to 25 MbpsHughes, a unit of EchoStar Corp., said it the new 25-meg offering will live on March 16 and come with data plans ranging from 10 gigabytes to 250 GB per month. Pricing on the HughesNet Gen5 residential service starts at $49.99 per month, with data plans that include up to 50 Gigabytes per month. Business plans for that tier start at $69.99 per month, with data plans up to 250 GB. The service includes in-home/location WiFi.

If customers exceed their monthly data limits, continues at a “reduced speed” until the next billing cycle. Per the policy for the current HughesNet Gen 4 service, speeds are reduced to 150 kilobits per second when the monthly data allowance is exceeded.

The Gen5 offering will also support a “Bonus Zone” that includes 50 GB of free data per month for use in the off-peak hours of 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. The service also includes an optional Video Data Saver that adjusts data rates for streaming video to DVD quality and enables more viewing of shows and movies while using less bandwidth. Customers also have the ability to temporarily opt out of the video quality feature for a period of four hours.  

The faster offering, to be available across the continental U.S. and part of Alaska, is powered by the recently launched EchoStar XIX satellite along with the EchoStar XVII satellite, and underpinned by the Hughes Jupiter satellite networking platform. From its 97.1° orbital slot, EchoStar XIX’s 138 beams provide coverage for high-speed Internet service to homes and small businesses in the continental United States, Alaska, Mexico and parts of Canada and Central America.

“HughesNet Gen5 will bring a new level of Internet services to the approximately 18 million households across the United States that are either unserved or suffering from slow wireline Internet services,” Pradman Kaul, president of Hughes Network Systems, said in a release.”

Hughes ended 2016 with 1.03 million broadband subs.

Satellite broadband service provider ViaSat said it has notched a contract valued at $73.21 million provide global in-flight Internet and connectivity services to Air Force One and other U.S. government senior leader aircraft. 

The “non-competitive, firm-fixed price contract” awarded by the United States Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) covers support for VC-25s, C-17s, C-32s, C-37s, C-40s and the complete range of VIP and special air mission aircraft, ViaSat said.

ViaSat said the service, based on a hybrid Ku/Ka-band system, will enable “a Situation Room in the Sky experience,” and allow for an in-flight connection strong enough to handle full-motion high-definition video streaming for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), en-route Command and Control (C2) and Search and Rescue (S&R) missions. It also can maintain two-way communications through HD video conference calling or VoIP calls.

Citing DISA figures, ViaSat said the face value of the award is $33.05 million, funded by fiscal 2016 operations and maintenance funding, with a total cumulative face value of $73.21 million.

“The period of performance” runs spans June 1, 2016, through May 31, 2017, with two six-month option periods, ViaSat said.

“This award is a significant accomplishment and we are proud to be delivering remarkably fast data speeds and an abundance of capacity to support the in-flight communications needs of our government’s senior leadership on Air Force One and other special air mission aircraft,” Ken Peterman, SVP and GM for ViaSat’s government systems division said, in a statement.

ViaSat ended its fiscal Q4 with 697,000 residential subs; it reports fiscal Q1 2017 results next month.

Broadening its pursuit of consumers in rural markets while also taking on DSL services and lower-end cable Internet competitors, ViaSat has introduced a new satellite-delivered speed tier under the “Exede” brand that offers up to 25 Mbps downstream that’s delivered via a new WiFi modem.

ViaSat, which has 687,000 subscribers, said its new, speedier modem features a built-in wireless router with dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n, a four-port Gigabit Ethernet router,  and an integrated Exede Voice adapter for the company’s optional home phone service that reduces device clutter, as it eliminates the need for a separate adapter or base station.

The new offering more than doubles the downstream speed supported by Exede’s former high-end offering, which delivers up to 12 Mbps down.  The new 25 Mbps offering is paired with an upstream that provides up to 3 Mbps.

ViaSat said the new WiFi modem with the 25-meg capability is offered in “limited markets” with service plans that start “as low as $10 per month than the cost of Exede 12 Mbps service plans.” According to a company official, the new plan costs $10 extra for most plans, and $20, if added to the company’s promotional $39.99 plan in some areas.

Exede’s 12 Mbps plans start at $59.99 per month (with 10 gigabytes of data); then rise to $99.99 per month (with 18 GB) and $149.99 per month (with a 30 GB data plan).

The new 25 Mbps offering is “just a hint of what’s to come as we prepare for the launch of our next satellite, which will offer even faster speeds nationwide,” Lisa Scalpone, VP of ViaSat’s Braodband Services division, said in a release.

ViaSat’s also been asked to provide more detail on the data plans for the new 25 Mbps offering.

ViaSat’s various data plans include monthly data usage/allowance policies.

ViaSat’s new 25 Mbps Exede service uses the company’s Liberty plans (12 GB/18 GB/30 GB of “priority data,” plus the company’s “Liberty Pass").  In ViaSat’s Freedom areas, the limit is 150GB per month before customers experience reduced speeds until the next monthly billing period starts.

Under the Liberty plans, customers get a monthly supply of “priority data” delivered at the fastest available data speeds. Once that monthly usage threshold is crossed, customers automatically get a “Liberty Pass” that shifts users to speeds of 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps that are based on network traffic levels and typically vary based on the time of day the customer is accessing the service. 

 This video explains the Liberty plans in more simplified detail.

StarBand, a once-promising satellite-based high-speed Internet service, announced on its Web site that it will shut down the service on September 30, citing “steadily increasing operating costs, bandwidth demand and competing consumer broadband alternatives.”

StarBand, once known as Gilat-To-Home and now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Gilat Satellite Networks, launched its two-way service in 2000. It merged into the operations of Spacenet Inc. in 2005, and sold its Spacenet subsidiary, to SageNet, for about $16 million, in December 2013.

StarBand, a service that’s been governed by a relatively strict “Fair Access Policy” and generally targeted to consumers and small-office customers who don’t have access to wireline broadband, has been marketing three tiers, topped by Nova 1500, a 1.5 Mbps downstream by 256 kbps upstream offering that costs $119.99 per month.  Nova 100 (1 Mbps/125 kbps) runs $79.99 per month, and Nova 500 (512 kbps by 100 kbps) runs $59.99 per month.

“We thank every customer who selected StarBand over the last 15 years,” the company noted in its post to affected customers. “As you know, much has changed in the  decade-and-a-half since StarBand pioneered bringing high-speed Internet access to communities beyond the reach of traditional, land-based Internet services. Unfortunately, the time has come for StarBand to retire.”

In its FAQ about the coming shutdown, StarBand urges customers to check The National Broadband Map www.broadbandmap.gov for alternatives, and suggests that they check Exede or HughesNet if they still require satellite-based Internet service.

Wiredpoints out that StarBand’s demise could open up opportunities for Richard Branson’s OneWeb, or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which are both looking to offer satellite-based Internet service.  Google reportedly has interest in satellite-delivered Internet service via a fleet low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, complementing some of its drone- and balloon-based Internet  initiatives. Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is also looking a variety of alternatives, including satellites, for broadband delivery in low-density areas.

The StarBand FAQ said existing StarBand subs will no longer have access to their current email accounts after September 30, and that existing StarBand dishes and modems are not compatible with other service providers. “StarBand will not be repossessing the equipment. You can dispose of the equipment as you see fit. To dispose of in an eco-friendly manner, please see: http://search.earth911.com/,” the company explains.