Staying connected today is the key to outpacing your competition tomorrow.

“The key to success is getting into the store and listening to what the associates have to say.”

—Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club

Whether it’s email, texting, video conferencing, or streaming media, Viasat’s Ku Advanced business jet connectivity solution keeps your passengers and flight crews globally connected at up to 10 Mbps.

Sam Walton was a retailing and business aviation pioneer. In the mid-1950s, he used an 85-horsepower Model 145 Ercoupe to travel throughout Arkansas looking for new locations. Once his stores opened, the little silver airplane gave him the flexibility to make frequent visits to Walmart customers and associates. Sam knew the value of staying connected—and his Ercoupe kept him connected at 95 miles per hour.

In today’s business world, we measure connectivity in millions of bits per second. And whether you’re videoconferencing from your office or from a business jet over the Atlantic, high-speed connectivity and the capabilities it delivers are now keys to success.

“Business fliers today, especially the younger people in C-suites, have grown up being connected all the time,” said James Person, Viasat’s senior director, global business development, Business Aviation Division. “It’s critical to their ability to stay ahead of the competition.”

Not all connectivity is created equal.

Person explained that today’s travelers are “connectivity savvy” and aren’t settling for just any solution. They want technology that’s reliable, easy to use, and realistically priced.

“Earlier models of connectivity for large-cabin, long-range business jets would have been for a dedicated domestic service, combined with some kind of international L-band satellite solution,” he said. “It was often complicated to use and expensive. Users were paying $5 or more per megabyte of access for L-band.

“That kind of situation has become untenable for corporate and charter operators,” Person continued. “Operators want a one-stop solution that’s easy to use and priced at a monthly rate that allows them to keep their passengers seamlessly connected wherever in the world they are.”

Person added that the need to offer the right kind of connectivity is especially critical to Part 135 operators today. “Good luck trying to charter out an aircraft that does not have really good Wi-Fi,” he says. “Today’s customers are getting savvier and more sophisticated about what kind of connectivity they want.”

Delivering high-quality digital connectivity at up to 10 Mbps and with an array of fixed monthly pricing plans, Viasat’s new-generation Ku Advanced system has become extremely popular, Person said.

Viasat offers a variety of flexibly priced plans, he added. “We have flat rates, monthly plans, regional plans, and even hourly plans, which are popular with charter operators,” he explained. “They’re all designed to give operators and their business customers the best user experience while controlling costs.”

Ku Advanced keeps TISMA passengers securely connected.

A desire for reliable, high-quality, high-speed cabin connectivity at reasonable prices is why TISMA, a private jet management company, has had two of its three large-cabin aircraft upgraded to Viasat’s Ku Advanced satellite solution.

“We had Swift-64/SBB on our previous aircraft, but we upgraded platforms in 2013,” stated Gerry Laborce, TISMA’s director of maintenance. “The availability of near worldwide coverage with the speeds that Ku Advanced offers through all phases of flight is important to our clients and flight crews.”

Laborce added that while the majority of TISMA’s flights are within the U.S., its aircraft do operate internationally. The fact that the Ku Advanced system delivers reliable and secure high-speed connectivity are two of the greatest benefits of having Viasat as the provider.

Speaking of speeds: Viasat’s Ku Advanced system delivers up to 10 Mbps within the continental U.S. and up to 6 Mbps in the rest of the world. Either way, it’s a whole lot faster and delivers a much better user experience than the antiquated L-band systems it replaces.

“Emailing and video streaming are the most frequently used services,” Laborce said. “Now that Viasat has even further improved its network with a broader range of data plans, I can foresee even greater use of the Ku Advanced system.”

As Laborce mentioned, the security of the data going off aircraft is extremely important to TISMA and its passengers. Viasat’s Ku Advanced solution is one of the most secure satellite-based connectivity systems on, or above, the planet.

“As a leading provider of satcom-based connectivity solutions for U.S. government aircraft, Viasat offers networks that are as secure as they come,” Person explained. “We secure the satellite segment, and we provide our own ground segment as well, to keep the data off the public internet as much as we can. And because our business aircraft customers use that same network, they get to take advantage of our unmatched level of security.”

Ku Advanced: your connection to the future.

While the need for fast, secure cabin connections is important, Person stressed that the demand for increased bandwidth will continue to grow. And need has the proven ability to outstrip technology at a pretty fast clip.

Just how fast? Well, a recent Cisco white paper stated that by 2021 annual global IP traffic will reach 3.3 ZB zettabytes. (A zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes.)

That’s a lot of internet traffic. And while the vast majority will be carried by terrestrial or cellular networks, business fliers will still want the same connection quality in the air that they enjoy on the ground.

“Business passengers won’t care how they get their in-flight internet connectivity,” Person said. “All they’ll care about is that it’s fast and reliable. Right now, we have 26 different beams that make up our Ku network. And that will continue to expand as needed.”

He explained that Viasat is committed to staying at the forefront of high-speed networking technology. “When we designed and launched ViaSat-1, in 2011,” Person noted, “it was the highest-capacity satellite in the world. In 2017, we launched ViaSat-2 and doubled that capacity. Now we’re working on the ViaSat-3 constellation. Each of these satellites will have more capacity than all the other communications satellites in the world combined.”

The obvious goal is to keep up with demand. But in doing so, the company is also taking steps to ensure that the Ku Advanced systems that customers install today will be upgradeable to even faster future Ka-band systems.

“The dilemma for aircraft owners is how can they install in-flight connectivity solutions today that will still be useful in five or 10 years?” Person said. “Easy upgradeability is something legacy systems couldn’t offer.

“That’s another Viasat advantage,” he added. “We are vertically integrated. We don’t just design our satellites and ground networks; we also design and build our own hardware for the aircraft. Our Ku Advanced and Ka shipsets use the same hardware footprint for the three compact LRUs. If an operator has our Ku Advanced shipset and wants to upgrade to a Viasat Ka-band system later on, they can use all the same wiring and hardware. It’s a much simpler and less expensive solution.”