When it comes to a broadband connection to the home, customers have had only three basic options for years: cable, fiber or DSL. Although satellite TV providers have offered broadband, the service has been underwhelming to say the least. Let’s just say it’s slow. Really slow.
That may soon change in a big way. Yesterday at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, ViaSat and DISH Network jointly announced a next-generation satellite broadband service that will make it competitive with other Internet connection providers for the first time.
At the announced speed of 12 Mbps, the satellite option is no longer an industry joke. “We can now allocate lots of bandwidth per customer,” says Lisa Scalpone, Vice President of ViaSat. “Consumers have to love us.”
ViaSat and DISH are both hoping that the consumers who will love them the most are the 8-10 million rural customers who have been shut out of broadband service at acceptable speeds. This may present an interesting problem if the service proves successful. The new satellite has a 1 million user capacity, which means it will only take 10 percent of rural customers alone to “sell out” the space. According to Scalpone, it takes approximately 3 years to build and launch a new satellite.
Why has it taken satellite content providers like DISH so long to provide a reasonable alternative in the exploding broadband space? Most of the satellite technology in use today was built years ago, when web pages were pretty basic and video streaming was limited and short. As webpages got more sophisticated and video use boomed, those shiny hunks of metal orbiting the earth got left in the dust.
The “breakthrough” happened quietly last October when a Proton M launch rocket blasted into space from Kazakhstan carrying the ViaSat1, the highest capacity satellite in the world. After 8-10 weeks of testing and positioning, ViaSat was ready to announce a whole new era in satellite broadband.
DISH is offering bundled service (available with basic TV in February) starting at $79 per month and ViaSat’s own offering, brand-named Exede, is priced at $50. That’s definitely competitive. Now it only remains to be seen whether the connection speeds truly work as promised and if consumers are willing to cut the cord and look heavenward for broadband delivery.
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