The brief

Analyst view

• All three ViaSat-3 satellites are now in service: F3 over Asia-Pacific (Aug 31, 2026) and F2 over the Americas (Sep 17, 2026).
• F1, launched 2023, was crippled when its big antenna failed to deploy properly and runs at a small fraction of its design capacity.
• Fiscal 2026 revenue was about $4.6B: $1.34B from defense technology, $1.19B from in-flight Wi-Fi, its largest service.

Technical approach

As reported

Big GEO

A few very large satellites

Instead of thousands of low satellites, Viasat puts a handful of very large ones 36,000 km up, each covering about a third of the Earth.

Beams

Capacity steered to demand

Each satellite reshapes its spot beams in orbit, so bandwidth can be moved to busy flight routes, shipping lanes or crisis zones.

Multi-band

Ka-band plus Inmarsat L-band

Ka-band carries high-speed traffic; the Inmarsat L-band fleet adds robust, lower-speed links for safety and government users.

Mobility

Paid by planes and ships

The business leans on in-flight Wi-Fi, maritime and defense contracts, where users pay more per gigabyte than homes do.

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