The Viasat-1 spacecraft will deliver broadband services to customers in the US and Canada.

With a total data throughput of some 140 Gbps, the satellite has more capacity than all other commercial communications satellites over North America combined.

Viasat-1 left Earth from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The lift-off for its carrier Proton rocket occurred at 00:48 local time (18:48 GMT Wednesday). The flight was declared a success just over nine hours later.

Viasat-1 will be moved to a geosynchronous position at 115 degrees West, and should become fully operational in 2012 after a period of testing.

The satellite carries the name of San Diego-based space technology supplier Viasat, but will be pressed into service for its satellite broadband division, Wildblue Communications.

Wildblue already has more than 400,000 subscribers using a trio of satellites, and should have room for about a million more with Viasat-1.

“Consumer demand doubles about every two-and-a-half to three years. In other words, you want twice the service, twice the speed, twice the volume that you had two or three years ago for the same price,” explains Wildblue president and CEO, Tom Moore.

“Viasat-1 is all about trying to address that growing, insatiable demand,” he told BBC News.

‘Under-served’ target

The company expects to be offering a range of consumer packages, directly or indirectly through partners, typically in the download range of 8-12Mbps and at a price of around $50 a month.

Viasat-1 is among a wave of new satellites that are operating in the Ka-band, a part of the satellite-apportioned radio spectrum that allows high data-rates.

Prior to Viasat-1, the most powerful commercial telecoms satellite in orbit was Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat with a total throughput of some 70 Gbps. Online since May, it is serving European consumer broadband markets.

Wildblue’s principal competitor in North America, Hughes Network Systems, has its own Ka giant coming next year. The satellite, called Jupiter, will have a total throughput of 100 Gbps. Many more satellite operators are expected to enter the fray in the coming years.

All of them believe their next-generation spacecraft will help transform the image of satellite broadband. The platforms’ in-orbit technologies are now capable of offering ADSL-like speeds at more competitive prices. Allied to this, improvements have been made to their gateways, or ground segments, to tackle old bugbears such as latency – the time delay associated with data having to travel 36,000km up to space and back before crossing computer networks.

The operators claim that for nearly all applications – bar fast-response, or “high-twitch”, online gaming – latency is no longer the issue it was.

The need for a dish installation and then a relatively expensive subscription mean satellite broadband was typically seen as a last-resort solution for “not-spots” – locations where no terrestrial broadband technologies are available. These are mostly remote rural areas, but include a surprisingly large number of places close to major conurbations. However, Wildblue says the capability of Viasat-1 also allows it to spread its appeal to those locations that simply have a poor broadband experience.

“We’ve tended to focus on areas where there’s not a huge amount of other alternatives, but increasingly we think that we’ll be very, very compelling to what we consider the ‘under-served’ – not the unserved, the people that have no alternative, but the under-served markets. These are people who would pay maybe a little bit more for a higher speed and/or a higher quality of service,” said Mr Moore.

Mobile markets

The US experience is being watched closely in Europe where the first net-dedicated satellites became operational this year. As well as Eutelsat’s Ka-Sat, London-based Avanti Communications began putting customers through its new Hylas-1 platform.

There is still some scepticism concerning Ka; there are investors who worry that the satellite broadband market maybe squeezed in due course as fast terrestrial technologies – cable, fibre, 4G-LTE, etc – are rolled out to more of those unserved and under-served locations.

“Viasat-1 is very important I think because it will prove that the demand in the US satellite broadband market is strong. And that should have good positive implications for the European counterparts, Eutelsat and Avanti,” said satellite investment analyst Henrik Nyblom from Nomura in London.

Eutelsat, for one, is very bullish, about the prospects for its Ka-Sat. CEO Michel de Rosen told BBC News: “Maybe one reason for the scepticism is that for more conventional satellites in what is our number one business [satellite TV], the ramp up is usually very rapid.

“In fact, we sign contracts with customers very often just after launch, and sometimes for up to 15 years – the life of the satellite.

“In this case, because it is new we expect the ramp up to be more progressive. That is a change compared to what the people who follow us and who know the industry are used to.

And he added: “We will see more high-throughput satellites because they are the best way to reduce the cost of supply. And because demand is there, expect to see more of them in Europe and on other continents.”

Additional to their consumer broadband markets, Ka satellites are likely to find increasing use in specialist video applications, such as for news organisations needing to report live from the field, and in providing connectivity to passengers on planes and trains.

Wildblue has done a deal to provide such connectivity on the American airline Jetblue, and has been talking with United Airlines and Continental about the prospects for similar services.

The Commission wants to establish a €7bn fund to provide grants for rural broadband projects, with a further €2.1bn set aside for infrastructure projects that support electronic identity, health care records and e-procurement.

“Here in Europe we face several problems in deploying broadband, with insufficient investment, problems in accessing capital, and a weak business case for rollout in less populated areas,” said Neelie Kroes, vice president for the EC’s digital agenda initiative. “This is potentially a serious barrier to growth.”

The EC estimates that the “right broadband development” could boost Europe’s finances by €1tn over the next decade, creating millions of jobs.

Kroes said the European grants should lower the risk for private companies involved in deploying broadband infrastructure. But the funding will not just go to incumbent telcos, she insisted.

“We would competitively engage new players — such as non-telecoms utility companies, or construction firms,” she added.

Under the EC Digital Agenda, the EC has committed to ensuring that the entire population has access to broadband with speeds of at least 30Mbps by 2020, with at least half having access to services of 100Mbps.

The European targets look less ambitious than the plans laid out by the British government. It has earmarked £530m to ensure 90 per cent of the UK population has access to superfast broadband by 2015.

Currently, the UK’s telecom regulator Ofcom classifies broadband speeds of 24Mps as “superfast’ – a threshold some way below the EC’s target figures.

In September 2011, UK culture secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that the UK was in danger of missing its broadband targets.

The EC’s spending plans must now be approved by members of the European Parliament and the EC Council of Ministers.

The Ka Sat satellite which weighs in at over 6,000 kilos, is in geostationary orbit at 9 degrees east, and provides the backbone of satellite owner Eutelsat’s next generation Tooway services which are available from us now.

The Ka Sat satellite which was built on the Eurostar E3000 platform by Astrium and which has a 16 year life expectancy, offers a total capacity of 70 Gbps throughput, enough to provide high quality broadband for over 1,500,000 homes and small businesses.

The satellite provides its unique Ka band coverage via 82 spot beams. Each spot beam is associated with a 237 Mhz wide transponder allowing data throughout of 475 Mbps. The spot beam network covers the whole of Europe including the new European countries, the whole of the Mediterranean basin, some of North Africa and some of the Middle East.

Eutelsat has invested around €350m in Ka Sat and its sophisticated ground network which comprises an interconnected infrastructure of 10 gateways for a high quality service and the ultimate in speed and resilience.

The new Ka Sat network is controlled by Eutelsat’s Skylogic subsidiary at their NOC in Turin, and customer provisioning, support, billing and ongoing ground services are provided by ToowayDirect in conjunction with its network of European resellers.

The satellite has completed final testing following the gradual commissioning of it’s on-board systems over the 5 months since launch. Our first customers are going live on the new Ka Sat based services on the 1st of June 2011. You can order your new Tooway equipment and service today.

Customer Premises Equipment will be the new ViaSat SurfBeam2 modem with a 74 cm antenna. The Ka Sat satellite and the new modem operate the latest technology in the forward channel MF-TDMA, meaning customers will be able to achieve significantly better broadband performance that is currently available in many rural areas and not-spots.

To enable a home, business or community to receive broadband by satellite, we don’t need to dig holes or trenches to lay cables; there are no unsightly masts, towers or aerials needed. We don’t therefore need to disturb wildlife, flora or fauna to connect you to super fast broadband. Unlike its wired counterparts, satellite broadband needs no energy-expensive civil engineering works to every house, no unsightly street cabinets.

A single satellite sitting in space consumes little to no fuel to run and can serve entire continents. The Twoway satellites run on 100% solar energy and the complete satellite launch process, using hydrogen powered engines, generates about the same amount of CO2 as a normal US coast-to-coast airline trip on a Boeing 747.