September 14, 2017

Bandwidth Requirements to Keep Driving Future Satellite Developments

From Spacenews

The requirement for higher and higher bandwidth will remain the major driver shaping future satellite infrastructure and services in the next five years, according to Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of Viasat.

Speaking Sept. 12 at the World Satellite Business Week here, Dankberg said that terabit-capable satellites like the Viasat3 satellite it is building with Boeing, are more responsive to customer expectations than forthcoming low-Earth-orbit mega-constellations emphasizing lower latency than geostationary satellites.

“Our customer want more bandwidth, they want to be able to stream video,” Dankberg said.  “We have done studies when we asked customers what would affect their willingness to pay for a service and we found that latency has the least impact.”

Lower latencies are a major strength of mega-constellations such as the 648-spacecraft fleet of broadband satellites being developed by OneWeb, whose aggressive timetable and a $1.2 billion investment led by Japan’s SoftBank is sending anticipatory shock waves through the industry.

Dankberg was one of five industry leaders on a panel discussing next-generation satellite infrastructure and services. Continue >