A shift may, in fact, be underway in the IFC market, but Viasat is still riding high. The company’s latest quarterly earnings note a 13% increase in commercial aviation aircraft in service over the past year, now around 3,950 active.
Arianespace
Big revenue, big write-offs for Viasat
Viasat took in $1.2 billion last quarter, but also recognized $1.6 billion in write-offs related to satellite failures and program cancellations. More interesting, however, is growing clarity of what the future constellation will look like – and who the future customer base will be – for the combined companies.
Inmarsat’s GX-5 launches successfully, kicking off the next phase of the GX story
Inmarsat’s GX-5 satellite successfully reached orbit on Tuesday, beginning its mission to dramatically increase Ka-band capacity over Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It also represents a key milestone as the GX Aviation prodcut evolves. It is not just about the increased capacity, though that bandwidth makes the future plans easier and less expensive to deliver.
Small Sats get a launch boost from SpaceX, Ariancespace
Cutting the cost for delivering satellites into space is a key factor to increasing capacity and improving coverage in the inflight connectivity market. SpaceX and Arianespace both announced programs today that will help on this front.
Viasat, Arianespace upgrade launch plans
One of the three ViaSat-3 satellites was planned for a launch on the Ariane 5 rocket from Arianespace. That will no longer happen.
[PR] Ariane 6 secures first commercial customer
Eutelsat and Arianespace signed a five launch deal this week, including use of the Ariane 6 rocket now in development. That’s a big rocket and a big deal for the two.
Viasat secures ULA as third launch partner for ViaSat-3 constellation
Viasat now holds launch contracts for all three satellites of its upcoming ViaSat-3 constellation. The company announced today that United Launch Alliance (ULA) will carry one of the three satellites into orbit between 2020 to 2022 on an Atlas 5 rocket.
Wifi across the Pacific gets a major boost from Eutelsat, Panasonic
Passengers flying across the Pacific Ocean are set for a major upgrade in inflight connectivity performance. Panasonic Avionics and Eutelsat announced this week that Eutelsat 172b is now in service, delivering a massive increase in capacity to the market, particularly for the routes aircraft use between the United States and Asia.