SatSig topic:

Wildblue spot beams over mainland USA

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Aug 16^th, 2013 at 12:20am

Sep 26^th, 2013 at 12:17pm

That's about a six year old map, Wildblue has since been taken over by ViaSat and renamed Exede. Current coverage is with two satellites; the previous generation WB1 (blue) and a current generation ViaSat1 (green).

//greg//

Jul 25^th, 2016 at 4:38pm

Hi guys,

If there is anyone left on this topic... Could someone explain to me how ViaSat, who took over WildBlue, is planning to introduce new HTS satellites that are much more compelling than the current existing competition offers. V-2 and V-3 are meant to offer capacity of, respectively, 300 and 1000 Gbps? How does this work exactly (this is more than 130x the capacity of Inmarsat Global Express I-5 for example).
Is there something hidden here or is it meant to be true and really disruptive?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Jul 25^th, 2016 at 8:10pm

Regarding the 1000 Gbit/s for Viasat 3 see my next message below. I doubt that ViaSat would publish a figure that was wrong.

Maybe Viasat 3 will support more customers by not providing unused capacity to customers that are not actually active at that instant, e.g. by diverting power from less used beams.

Viasat 2 will have increased coverage, including all of the Caribbean and Central America, plus the north Atlantic Ocean extending east as far as London Heathrow airport, UK.

ViaSat 3 will have "Global coverage", such that 3 such satellites spaced around the equator can provide coverage everywhere, except the polar regions. How is this to be done? A good question and ViaSat don't tell so far!

I have tried to guess, but each time on further thought I have decided it is no good and drawn a blank!

As far as cost effectiveness goes, ViaSat claim lower capital satellite cost per Gbit/s thus : Wildblue-1 $40M, KA-SAT $10M, VS-1 $3.5, VS-2 1.75M.

Contributions as to how it might be done would be appreciated!

Best regards, Eric.

Jul 28^th, 2016 at 1:19pm

This web blog: https://tmfassociates.com/blog/2016/07/15/hopping-mad/ is worth reading.

There appears to be doubt that there is sufficient Ka band bandwidth available to make 350 GBit/s possible on ViaSat 2, as they are asking the FCC for a further 600 MHz.

Shortage of bandwidth may also affect ViaSat 3, providing doubt about the claimed 1000 Gbit/s capacity for ViaSat 3.

If anyone knows more or can spare the time to try and assess how 1000 Gbit/s might be obtained on ViaSat3 please say below..

Aug 3^rd, 2016 at 11:17am

Would ViaSat 3 only be a mythical beast as Inmarsat claims?

New interesting article from the same source:

https://tmfassociates.com/blog/2016/08/01/going-global/

Increasing competition between ViaSat, Inmarsat, SES and EchoStar in the Ka-band field.

After I-5 Global Express, Inmarsat is planning to launch I-6 in 2019/2020, similar timing than ViaSat V-3. Technically, we can ask ourselves what are they planning to do differently than ViaSat with V-3?