Twelve years ago, Viasat pioneered full, fast, free inflight Wi-Fi for JetBlue Airways, setting a standard for others to follow. At that time, its strategy was straightforward: the satellite operator and ISP would launch high-capacity Ka-band geostationary satellites — and partner with others who did — to provide what was seen by many as a best-in-class inflight connectivity service, albeit one that would initially accommodate specific regions, and later global coverage via the ViaSat-3 constellation.
In the United States, the big three major carriers, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, subsequently became customers. In Australia, where Viasat partnered with the Australian government’s satellite Internet provider NBN, Qantas signed on.
When Viasat acquired Inmarsat on 30 May 2023, and with it the Inmarsat Global Xpress Ka-band GEO network, its aero footprint saw vast expansion. But the additional satellite assets didn’t bring an immediate capacity boost to airline customers of Viasat’s GM-40 antenna terminal; that required Viasat to reconfigure its ground network to allow cross-roaming between the Viasat and Inmarsat networks. With that work complete, and a substantial new multi-year contract inked with Telesat for Lightspeed Ka-band Low Earth Orbit (LEO) services in support of multi-orbit GEO/LEO inflight connectivity, Viasat has seen fit to give its next-generation IFC work a name.
Enter Amara. Announced at the Aircraft Interiors Expo, “Amara is the integration of all the Global Xpress assets into Viasat. Since the acquisition [of Inmarsat], one of the questions was how the two networks are going to be together. So, Amara is sort of kicking off the start of that, which is basically on the premier terminal, the GM-40; it has access now to all the GX satellites kind of [on a] going forward basis. And it’s all been unlocked by the ViaSat-3 technology in our ground infrastructure,” Don Buchman, vice president and general manager of Viasat’s Commercial Aviation business, explained to Runway Girl Network at the show.
What does this mean for airlines and passengers? For one, it means that the likes of JetBlue and other Viasat customers carrying the GM-40 terminal can have polar coverage when Viasat’s Global Xpress payloads on HEO satellites start supporting IFC this summer. And it enables Viasat to fill in some coverage gaps whilst readying for the launch of the Viasat-3 F2 and F3 birds.
Notably, Amara is forward compatible with Telesat Lightspeed. “The GM-40 basically gives utility to the current customers as Amara. They can basically do a software update, get the Telesat waveform on and have their terminal Telesat [Lightspeed]-compatible,” said Buchman. That’s particularly important because whilst the Amara roadmap will also see Viasat ultimately introduce a ‘Viasat Aera’-branded dual-beam, phased array antenna to support multi-orbit IFC, aircraft fitted with the classic GM-40 gimbaled antenna will be compatible via the simple software update, according to Buchman. He reckons that some 5,000 aircraft will be installed with GM-40 by the time Telesat launches Lightspeed.
“So basically, we bring utility to Telesat’s constellation on day one with revenues. And for us it’s an immediate advantage for our customers who have access to that for not only capacity but also coverage. And then, over the long term it brings in the benefits of the multi-orbit for low latency applications,” said the Viasat executive.
Telesat has been eyeing a 2027 go-live date for Lightspeed. When Viasat Aera comes to market, roughly in three years, it will enable airlines to simultaneously connect to GEO satellites operated by Viasat and its partners, and the Lightspeed LEO satellites. Viasat intends to put latency-sensitive applications over LEO and high-density tasks, like video, over GEO.
Dual-beam ESA architecture comes with its own set of challenges. For one, it uses a lot of power, leading to heat dissipation questions. Will Viasat employ an active cooling system? Buchman said heat dissipation is definitely a consideration but noted that the hardware is still in the design phase.
Other possible configurations are on the table, including pairing an ESA with the GM-40, as Buchman previously described to RGN.
Even as LEO-only and multi-orbit, single-beam LEO/GEO IFC solutions enjoy strong talkability and notable take-up in the market as airlines adopt the free Wi-Fi model (Starlink, for one, has secured more than 3,000 tails, which is understood to include business jets), Viasat sees that momentum as evidence its original hypothesis — that the market needs full, fast and free — was correct.
“So, we knew competition would be attracted, right? Once you unlock that market, we’re not going to own it ourselves,” Buchman said.
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Featured image credited to Jason Rabinowitz
