How ViaSat's Exede makes satellite broadband not suck

On the first open day at CES in Las Vegas, in a temporary building outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg and a team of executives and engineers were trying to do something very difficult: persuade people that broadband satellite isn't the worst idea ever.

ViaSat, which bought satellite broadband provider WildBlue in 2009, has invested $400 million in a new satellite—and millions more into a network of ground stations and a terrestrial fiber network— that Dankberg believes will change the image of satellite much in the way Hyundai has changed the image of Korean cars. A lot of that bet rides on the capacity of ViaSat-1, the satellite at the center of ViaSat's Exede broadband service (also being offered through Dish Network). Exede offers bandwidth that is better than most DSL services: 12 megabits per second down and 3 megabits per second up. That bandwidth is possible partly because of ViaSat-1, which is basically a giant bridge in the sky, providing 140 gigabits per second throughput between service users and the service's 20 terrestrial teleports distributed around the US. Each of those ground stations has gigabits of capacity, and are in turn connected to the Internet through high-capacity peering points. ViaSat-1's coverage beams reach about 75% of the of the US. The majority of the remainder—mostly in the Rocky Mountain timezone, except for ViaSat-1's islands of coverage around Denver and Phoenix—is covered by the WildBlue satellites, which are also getting upgraded service thanks to the investment made by ViaSat in the ground stations. Dankberg said that most of ViaSat's existing customers are clustered around population centers, so ViaSat's coverage zones were prioritized to reach the largest potential audience. ViaSat's next satellite will fill in the rest of the gaps.