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Satellite operator Viasat (booth 1023) has launched regional and global service plans for its Ka-band satcom, offering aircraft operators new options for broadband service at lower prices when global connectivity fails. is not necessary. The new Viasat Select includes global and regional service plans with no speed limits on its Ka-band network.
The GAT-5510 airborne terminal required to access Viasat’s Ka-band satellites is designed for installation in super-midsize and larger business jets and includes three LRUs: the 12-inch satellite dish, modem, and l ‘power supply, for a total installed weight of approximately 50 pounds. Viasat is vertically integrated and builds the hardware, including the airborne terminal and satellite payloads, and provides the connectivity service. Value-added reseller partners are also able to provide Viasat service to their customers.
“The problem we’ve heard is that customers don’t like data caps and speed limits,” said Claudio D’Amico, Viasat business line manager, business aviation. Select not only offers customized regional and global service plans, but all available features are accessible to all Select customers. An operator with a regional plan covering North America, for example, can pay less than $ 3,000 per month and still receive the same broadband service with no speed limit as a customer paying significantly more for an unlimited global plan. . The least cost plan has data caps, but no speed impact.
“You can select a plan that matches your operational profile,” he said. “And you get the same performance across all service plans. It’s different pricing [for the plans] but we don’t change the performance.
Ka-band service on Viasat satellites typically operates at around 20 Mbps, but after Viasat lifted the speed limits last year, some customers saw much higher numbers, with some reaching 80 Mbps. Next year, Viasat will launch the first of three ViaSat-3 terabits per second satellites, which will add more capacity to its Ka-band network, which now operates on two satellites (ViaSat-1 and -2). The first ViaSat-3 will add to the existing coverage area mainly in North America, while the second will complement the coverage in Europe and the third will add the Asia-Pacific region. Viasat also has coverage in Brazil through a partnership with Telebrás. “We provide coverage on 90% of business aviation travel routes,” D’Amico said, “and are focusing our capabilities on heavy travel routes. With ViaSat-3 we will be able to improve and extend this.
An attractive feature of Viasat’s new lower-cost offerings is that they integrate seamlessly with developments in avionics and advanced air mobility, where planes must be connected to the Internet full time. Honeywell’s recent announcement of its next-generation Anthem avionics suite is one example. Viasat and other satellite connectivity systems provide ground coverage, unlike air-to-ground systems that use cell tower antennas, and this capability is also needed for cloud-connected avionics like Anthem.
“Anthem is trying to solve customer issues and make it easier for pilots to fly,” D’Amico said. “Honeywell is putting IT in the cloud, so less hardware is needed on the plane, and there are better features across all platforms. This is in line with what we are trying to do with Viasat. We try to provide a flexible, efficient and cost effective solution to operators.
To demonstrate Viasat’s service in a super-mid-size jet platform, this writer traveled with Viasat from Portland, Oregon, to Harry Reid International Airport in a Bombardier Challenger 350 equipped with the Viasat Ka-band satcom. The five passengers and the two pilots all connected multiple devices to the system, and testing included running FaceTime video calls, streaming YoutubeTV videos, sending and receiving emails with attachments, messaging Slack and other tasks. I did a speed test while we were all using satcom and saw 12 Mbps upload and 0.68 Mbps upload speeds, and that was while multiple devices were connected.
While some critics of geostationary (high) orbit satellite systems say the signal delays cause too much latency that slows down the transmission of information, this was not the case during this flight. “I hear a lot about other satellite constellations and latency,” D’Amico said, “but how does that change the experience? If the user is able to broadcast live video and work with geostationary satellites and sees no latency effects, he added, “we don’t see that as a big deal.”
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