Under the terms of collaboration, the lease agreement will give Viasat additional coverage and capacity across the Middle East and Western Europe, ahead of the launch of its ViaSat-3 global constellation, to support its growing mobility and enterprise businesses, specifically across aviation, maritime and energy sectors.
“In working with Avanti, we can bring additional short-term capacity to the mobility and enterprise markets, enabling us to serve more customers, win new business and establish deeper market presence and penetration ahead of our ViaSat-3 satellite launch aimed over Europe, Middle East and Africa,” said Jimmy Dodd, president of Viasat Global Enterprise and Mobility.
The news expands on Viasat and Avanti’s long-standing relationship, having signed prior Ka-band capacity lease agreements. This latest agreement augments Viasat’s KA-SAT satellite coverage and capacity and will initially be used to serve new mobility customers in the region.
“We are delighted to extend our relationship with Viasat and provide them support in the delivery of broadband connectivity across Europe and the Middle East,” said Kyle Whitehill, CEO of Avanti.
“In-flight connectivity, in particular, is a high growth segment for satellite connectivity, and will serve Viasat well, enabling them to offer seamless connectivity capabilities across geographies.”
Viasat aims to use Avanti’s HYLAS 4 and HYLAS 2 satellites as of October 2021.
In related news, February saw Airbus award Viasat UK with an $8.5 million (£6.7 million) contract to upgrade the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite communications Network Control Stations (NCS) for the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).
This upgrade will deliver the UHF Skynet capability to the MOD satcomms using Viasat's Visual integrated satellite communications information, operation and networking (VISION) software platform – enabling the MOD to comply with the latest Integrated Waveform (IW) requirements, also known as IW Phase 2.
