ViaSat aims to blow seatback in-flight entertainment out of the water when its latest generation of satellites start blasting into space in mid-2019.
It may sound like a bold claim but Don Buchman, vice-president and general manager of ViaSat’s commercial mobility business, firmly believes the significant amounts of capacity offered by ViaSat-3, combined with growing passenger demand to stream content of their own choosing to their own personal devices, will eventually sound the death knell for embedded IFE systems.
“ViaSat-3 is really going to usher in the age of no seatback,” says Buchman, adding that it will enable airlines to “ditch seatback” IFE altogether.
Behind this confident assertion is a satellite that ViaSat claims will deliver 1 Terabit-per-second (1,000 Gigabit-per-second) of capacity. For comparison, the company’s ViaSat-1 satellite provides 140Gbps while ViaSat-2, due to launch in early 2017, will provide 300Gbps. Buchman is keen to point out that the satellites used by competitor Inmarsat for its soon-to-launch Global Xpress in-flight connectivity service offer significantly less capacity.
But rival Inmarsat is refusing to be drawn into a numbers comparison game. President Leo Mondale, speaking at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, says the 1 Terabit figure given by ViaSat is “theoretical” and is “what you talk about when you have made a big mistake with ViaSat-2”.
“I’m not going to compare my apple with their orange,” says Mondale
Buchman brushes doubts aside, responding that “ViaSat had doubters before when we launched ViaSat-1, and we proved them wrong. Today, ViaSat-1 remains the highest capacity satellite in the world”. He believes the industry is “at a tipping point”.
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Source: Flight Daily News
