California-based Viasat has obligations to pay out $291 million (€253.8m) in satellite manufacturing payments over the next five years. It also has obligations costing $509.8 million in other – non-owned – satellites. However, the main news from Viasat is that its proposed joint-venture with Space42 of the UAE to build a constellation of 2800 low Earth orbiting (LEO) direct-to-device satellites is still very much active.

Viasat is known to have seven geostationary satellites on order, three from Airbus and four from SWISSto12 for their smaller geostationary ‘HummingSat’ craft.

The leasing obligations include a deal with Telesat of Canada for capacity on Telesat’s Lightspeed LEO constellation. Lightspeed is expected to come into service later next year.

Viasat founder and CEO Mark Dankberg, in his Annual Report letter to shareholders, said the business “can be very successful by accomplishing three things.

· “Have the most bandwidth in whatever very small fraction of the world has the greatest demand for satellite bandwidth due to the number of people or commerce or national security applications.”

· “Waste the least amount of satellite capacity in the very large portion of the world that has very little demand because there are few people, little commerce, and little geo-political contention.”

· “Provide the greatest reliability via resilience to intentional and unintentional interference through orbital and operational diversity.”

As for the Equatys joint-venture with Space42, the Dankberg message to shareholders said: “Equatys is intended to [create] a neutral, shared infrastructure business model capable of enabling next-generation satellite direct-to-device and mobile satellite services. Shared infrastructure is commonplace in terrestrial wireless networks and is growing fast in data center infrastructure. We believe shared satellite infrastructure can lower costs, improve efficiency, expand market participation, and create meaningful long-term value for customers and shareholders alike.”

There is much market speculation that the Equatys project had slowed while a third partner was sourced to join the project. It had been expected that the 3rd player would be Rocket Lab of New Zealand. However, Rocket Lab has moved to buy Iridium which suggests that Equatys was no longer in its sights.

One other name – very much in the rumour mill – to join Equatys is Canada’s satellite builder MDA Space.

Viasat and Space42 had been expected to confirm their project in May.

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, Business, Satellite

Tags: space42, telesat, Viasat