Bill Sullivan of ViaSat on Ka-band: ‘[It] will fly in the summer of next year’ Part 2

ViaSat’s director for mobile broadband strategy and business development tells Michael Childers the connectivity service will focus on a high-capacity offering, priced to drive usage.

Following publication of remarks by representatives of Row 44 and Aircell that Ka-band might not be ready for deployment in 2012, ViaSat’s director for mobile broadband strategy and business development Bill Sullivan, is interviewed by Michael Childers for APEX NewsDigest to tell ViaSat’s side of the story. Read Part 1 of this interview.

Q: Why do the airlines need the extra capacity that Ka-band can supply?

A: It’s all about demand and passenger engagement. Just look at the growth of Internet use in homes, offices and in other mobile environments. It has been doubling every two to three years. The growth in demand in the mobile space has been particularly dramatic. In addition, consumer expectations of session speeds continue to rise. Systems that don’t have the capacity to keep up with this demand become congested and the user experiences low speeds and long wait times.

We saw this clearly when Aircell did its Google sponsored free trial last December. Based on the various public accounts of this trial, the take rate was much higher than with the paid service and the user experience diminished significantly due to the limited available capacity. The ability to support high levels of passenger engagement is important when evaluating the capacity available in a system. Will an airline be satisfied with offering broadband in a way that limits take rates to levels in the 5% to 10% range? Our system offers the capacity and economics so the airlines can offer very high levels of passenger engagement while supporting a compelling and consistent user experience.

Q: How will the bandwidth costs compare with Ku-band and ATG?

A: ViaSat is already an established aeronautical service provider at Ku-band with our Yonder Mobile Broadband Service. As such, we know exactly what it costs to serve aircraft using Ku-band. For a user session delivering a particular experience level (session speed and volume of data delivered), our Ka-band service in the U.S. will be significantly less expensive than any Ku-band offering. It is a compelling difference. When you look at the investment that has been made in the ATG systems today and the available capacity derived from that investment you can see a similar difference in cost of bandwidth.

Q: Isn’t there a latency issue with satellite broadband technology?

A: Ninety percent of the applications responsible for the increasing pace of bandwidth demand and traffic are not latency sensitive. A primary example is video, which is number one among those demand drivers. So it is not much of an issue. In addition, we have our own embedded network acceleration technology that brings web browsing response performance right up to par with a cable broadband experience. We have the ability to demonstrate very fast page loads, superior video performance as well as social networking, e-mail, VPN, and all of the typical applications passengers would use with our SurfBeam 2 system over our Ka-band satellites. We are more than happy to conduct such demonstrations for interested airlines.

Q: Can you deliver live TV over a Ka-band in-flight broadband system?

A: Right now we are focused, along with LiveTV, on using our Ka-band service for passenger broadband access and the Ku-band systems for live television. However, the capacity and economics of our advanced Ka-band satellites, along with our innovative networking technology, can enable a wide range of media services – potentially including some live content. But our job is to provide the wholesale connectivity to the airlines. The airlines will ultimately structure the services they offer in the way that fits what they want their passenger experience to be.

Q: What is your experience in delivering an in-flight broadband service?

A: ViaSat pioneered the use of Ku-band to provide broadband services to aircraft, first in partnership with ConneXion by Boeing, and then through our own highly successful Yonder mobile broadband service. We have roughly 300 aircraft equipped with our Ku-band systems – far more than all others combined.

Q: Is Ka the future of in-flight connectivity?

A: We believe that the same economics that drove Ka-band adoption in the residential broadband market apply to mobility markets and especially to the commercial airline market. Having said that, not all Ka-band satellites are the same. Our satellites are optimized to provide lots of bandwidth with economics that enable high levels of passenger engagement. Other Ka-band systems may provide broader coverage, but don’t support those same economics.

Given the powerful cost and capacity advantages of Ka-band, combined with our high-capacity network architecture, we believe it is the technology that can deliver the service and performance that customers want, on the ground or in the air.

Sullivan emphasized that ViaSat’s focus is on the provision of a high-capacity pipe to aircraft passengers. Unlike London-based Inmarsat, which is investing over a billion US dollars in the launch of five Ka-band satellites that will be used in parallel with its existing L-band service—with a single aircraft sometimes using both Inmarsat’s L-band Swift BroadBand (SBB) and the Ka-band Global Xpress—ViaSat is not targeting “safety of flight” services in the cockpit, but strictly the passenger cabin.

Sullivan believes that the economics of Ka-band could enable airlines to either offer a level of service free to passengers, or to include any fee in a bundled service with something else. Reflecting on the low take-up rates that some connectivity services have ostensibly incurred, versus the capacity-stretching take-up when there is no charge, Sullivan says that ViaSat wants to see 100 percent of passengers using the service in a pricing environment that drives usage without capacity issues.