Viasat is in “advanced discussions” with Telesat to buy Lightspeed Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite capacity for integration with its own Ka-band service in support of multi-orbit connectivity including for the aero market.
“What we’re aiming for is to integrate the two and we think that there is a way to integrate them that’s better than either one on its own,” Mark Dankberg, CEO of Viasat said during the firm’s FY2025 Q2 earnings conference call.
Telesat’s forthcoming laser-linked Lightspeed constellation is fully funded and working against a go-live date of 2027.
With complementary payloads in geostationary (GEO) and highly elliptical orbit (HEO) — and facing a growing threat from SpaceX’s Starlink LEO service — Viasat’s move to collaborate with Telesat for multi-orbit connectivity makes perfect sense. (Its Inmarsat Maritime business already uses Eutelsat OneWeb Ku-band LEO for a bonded connectivity service.)
Lightspeed has got “just a lot of good attributes” including the fact the satellites are steerable, Viasat’s vice president commercial mobility Don Buchman told RGN at the recent APEX Global Expo in Long Beach. He suggested that Lightspeed is “a smarter use of satellites” and noted that “there’s not a bazillion of them in orbit.”
Moreover, he said, it’s “enterprise grade”.
We’ve been watching what Telesat is doing. We think it’s a really smart constellation and very complementary with us GEO guys.
Buchman reckons that GEO satellites remain “the most economical and best way” to address demand density, supporting video and audio in concentrated places like busy airport hubs.
But low-latency LEO “has its place,” he said, noting: “We know that there’s a lot of latency sensitive applications. And so, what you want to be able to do is use a smart SD-WAN — you know, software-defined wide area network — and be able to route your traffic simultaneously over both links. Take my video and all my bandwidth-intensive applications and put them over GEO; and take my latency sensitive applications, which may be work applications, the cloud-based collaboration tools, gaming if that is a big thing — all those sort of latency sensitive ones — and have those [over] LEO.”
In terms of hardware, the satellite operator and aero ISP has multiple electronically steerable antenna (ESA) projects underway in the defense side of its business. But with its sights set on supporting multi-orbit IFC for airlines, Viasat is in the process of honing its plan for ultimately introducing a nextgen, dual-beam ESA in commercial aviation, RGN can reveal.
“Our perfect vision is you have an aircraft terminal — that’s the antenna and modem — that simultaneously connects to GEO and LEO,” Buchman said, noting that in Viasat’s view, it “can’t be an either or”.
“You want the terminal eventually to do both at the same time. So, to do that, you need a GEO. That’s where we come in. We’ve been investing in that. You need a LEO and those are just coming on board now,” he said.
Pertinent to commercial aviation, Lightspeed is in line to be added as a “Ka band/LEO satellite network operator” on Airbus’ supplier-furnished, linefit HBCplus broadband IFC program, which would enable airlines to tap Viasat or indeed other managed service providers (SES or Hughes) for their Ka-band GEO service with a Lightspeed LEO overlay.
Viasat appears poised to pair its GEO global service offering [Global Xpress] with Telesat Lightspeed LEO under the HBCplus program. Airbus uses Safran Passenger Innovations’ ThinKom Ka2517 VICTS-based terminal for the Ka-band side of this linefit program.
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Featured image credited to Telesat
