Viasat

Viasat is a United States–based provider of satellite broadband and communications services for residential, enterprise, aeronautical, maritime, and government users. The company specialises in high-capacity geostationary satellite systems operating primarily in the Ka-band, delivering high-speed broadband to fixed and mobile users worldwide.

Viasat’s satellite architecture has evolved through successive generations of HTS, including Viasat-1 and Viasat-2, culminating in the Viasat-3 constellation. The Viasat-3 system comprises three geostationary satellites designed to provide near-global coverage (Americas, EMEA, and Asia–Pacific), each employing advanced digital beamforming and flexible payload technologies to enable terabit-class capacity and dynamic allocation of bandwidth.

The first Viasat-3 satellite (Americas), launched in 2023, experienced a solar array deployment anomaly that has constrained its available capacity. The second satellite, Viasat-3 F2 (EMEA), was launched in early 2025 and is intended to provide coverage across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). It employs a flexible digital payload with advanced beamforming, enabling dynamic allocation of bandwidth and power across multiple spot beams, and supports a distributed gateway architecture to optimise capacity delivery and resilience across its service region. The third satellite, Viasat-3 F3 (Asia–Pacific), was launched on 1 May 2026 and is intended to complete near-global coverage of the Viasat-3 system, extending high-capacity broadband services across the Asia–Pacific region. Like F2, it incorporates flexible digital payload technology, enabling real-time reconfiguration of beam patterns and capacity distribution in response to traffic demand. Together, these satellites extend global coverage and enable a highly adaptive, high-throughput GEO system architecture.

On 30 May 2023, Viasat completed its acquisition of Inmarsat, significantly expanding its service portfolio. The combined Viasat–Inmarsat system integrates:

• Viasat’s Ka-band very high-capacity broadband satellites, optimized for throughput and data-intensive applications; and
• Inmarsat’s L-band and Ka-band geostationary satellites, optimized for global coverage, mobility, and high availability.

This complementary architecture enables a hybrid service model that balances high data rates with resilience, supporting applications ranging from in-flight connectivity and maritime broadband to safety-critical communications and Internet of Things (IoT) services.