Welcome to the #PaxEx Podcast, which tracks the evolution of the airline passenger experience and industry’s sustainability initiatives. We’re pleased to share our interview with Viasat vice president commercial mobility Don Buchman, which was conducted on the sidelines of the APEX Global Expo in Long Beach.
Viasat has long predicted that inflight entertainment would evolve to become a connected experience whereby passengers will be able to avail of their OTT streaming services via the seatback.
That dream, which is edging ever closer to reality, is part of what Viasat has been building towards, and investing in, or as Buchman describes it: “more airplanes connected, more people on the planes connected, more devices per person and each device using more data and then now you’ve extended the devices to the seatback.
“So, we’ve always said, just like our living rooms, entertainment isn’t connectivity, but connectivity has become entertainment and that’s where we’ve seen the trend go. And so, I think we’ve been building for it. Our investments are that way.”
Having set the standard on JetBlue for free streaming-level Wi-Fi over passenger devices in 2013, Viasat is “emboldened” by the recent news that more airlines are going free, including with SpaceX’s Starlink Low Earth Orbit (LEO) service.
“So, it’s like, you know, game on, right? This is exactly where we thought the market would be. We’re actually happy the market’s there because we bet right. I always use a business analogy. We weren’t like Kodak, who bet on film photography and digital photography took over and were left. We actually bet on this outcome. And this is what’s happening. And so, it makes you feel good about the investments for the last 15 years.”
Now Viasat is eyeing a multi-orbit paradigm to connect aircraft, simultaneously, to geostationary satellites and Low Earth Orbit satellites, routing video and all bandwidth-intensive applications over GEO and all latency-sensitive applications over LEO.
