[Via Satellite 02-12-2015] ViaSat<\/b> Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Dankberg sees an opportunity for new in-flight Wi-Fi strategies and technology to drive revenue for the company, even in the face of a shrinking U.S. market. In a conference call regarding an otherwise underwhelming third quarter earnings report \u2014 in which the company reported 18,000 in net adds against an expected 20,000 \u2014 ViaSat saw potential for growth in its In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) business portfolio in conjunction with a fluid, revenue-driving strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAviation broadband and consumer broadband are the big growth drivers in ViaSat\u2019s business in both the near and medium term,\u201d Andrew Spinola, senior analyst at Wells Fargo<\/b> told Via Satellite.<\/i> Last quarter ViaSat reported strong aviation shipments with 276 total planes in service to date. But with its major airline customers expecting near completion for installations on their contracts by mid-2015, Spinola warns that the company needs to score contracts elsewhere to keep the momentum going. \u201cThe aviation business will slow after JetBlue<\/b> and Continental<\/b> are fully activated unless ViaSat wins additional business,\u201d he said, noting that there are few commercial aviation opportunities left in the United States.<\/p>\n
ViaSat\u2019s CEO doesn\u2019t seem phased, however, and hopes to grow this market through new revenue-driving strategies that follow what he believes to be a changing attitude surrounding the expectations of price, speed and reliability in the IFC market.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone pretty much took for granted that in-flight Wi-Fi was kind of slow, independent of the price point. Airlines were focused on just checking the box to say they had Wi-Fi \u2026 but here you can see attitudes are definitely changing,\u201d said Dankberg in reference to an image on Routehappy.com illustrating customer satisfaction with the Exede Wi-Fi offering available on JetBlue. \u201cNow, we are seeing increasing attention paid to the quality of the Wi-Fi by the airlines. In-flight Wi-Fi is more and more seen as more than just ancillary revenue. More airlines are asking questions about how the best Wi-Fi could be monetized and integrated into a holistic brand strategy. It\u2019s not yet totally clear what those monetization strategies are but, as in most things, Internet and mobile economic value tends to follow user engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n
ViaSat is already working out ways to up user engagement alongside JetBlue, with tactics such as offering the service free-of-charge through a series of strategic partnerships.<\/p>\n
Additionally, technology-related strategies are also coming into play. Particularly in terms of addressing latency concerns, which still pop up as an issue when it comes to pitting the satellite-based offering against the more traditional Air-to-Ground (ATG) services. However, Dankberg believes the company can overcome the latency challenges through enhancing speed and bandwidth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that the dominant measures of technical performance for broadband really are speed and bandwidth,\u201d Dankberg explained. \u201cYes, latency is important, but for the vast majority of Internet traffic, speed and bandwidth are what\u2019s decisive.\u201d While the company has expressed interest in combining its satellite offering with an ATG system, it feels that improving these areas may be even more effective in providing customer satisfaction than lower-orbit satellites, which can provide lower latency than geosynchronous ones.<\/p>\n
ViaSat is also enthusiastic about its Ku\/Ka band satellite system coming into play with ViaSat 2 as well as a dual-band offering antenna the company is planning to introduce later on this year. The Ku\/Ka offering will be available for the government market alongside the commercial sector. The somewhat lackluster quarter may work against the provider\u2019s future plans, however.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lower levels of net adds have some investors concerned that the market won\u2019t be there to support ViaSat 2, but there are a number of reasons that ViaSat is confident in the case for V2, such as the greater total capacity, substantial increase in coverage, and technology innovations that will allow for meaningfully greater data allowances on V2 service plans, according to the company,\u201d said Spinola, who noted that ViaSat has hinted that the expanding offering may even see new markets, such as the business aviation segment. And ViaSat 2 may well open the door the company needs to keep the IFC business booming despite the lack of U.S. airlines looking for new connectivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cFundamentally, we see bandwidth economics as the enabling technology,\u201d Dankberg said. \u201cNext year ViaSat 2 satellite will be a big step forward compared to ViaSat 1 in both bandwidth economics and geographic coverage. There aren\u2019t any other Ku- or Ka-band satellite systems coming that have bandwidth economics even close to ViaSat 2.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 02-12-2015] ViaSat Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Dankberg sees an opportunity for new in-flight Wi-Fi strategies and technology to drive revenue for the company, even in the face of a shrinking U.S. market. In a conference call regarding an otherwise underwhelming third quarter earnings report \u2014 in which the company reported 18,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}