WildBlue, established to provide broadband access to consumers and small offices in rural areas and small cities in the U.S., said WildBlue-1 satellite will enable the company to serve more customers throughout the country.
WildBlue-1, manufactured by Space Systems/Loral, is estimated to triple the company’s customer capacity and expected to handle WildBlue's continuing rapid customer growth into 2008 and beyond. The spacecraft is a 4.7 metric ton high power satellite based on Space Systems/Loral's 1300 spacecraft bus and will provide Ka-band spot beam capacity over the contiguous United States.
Spot beam Ka-band satellites are a key component in WildBlue's low-cost wireless broadband infrastructure. WildBlue currently utilizes the Ka-band spot beam capacity over the United States on Telesat Canada's Anik F2 satellite, which was launched by Arianespace in July 2004.
“WildBlue-1 will help to ensure that we are able to handle 100 percent of customer demand into the foreseeable future,” said Dave Leonard, CEO of WildBlue. “Our low-cost, high-speed Internet via satellite service has proven extremely popular nationwide, requiring that we accelerate the launch of our new satellite later this year to meet the demand.”
Based on a successful fourth quarter launch, WildBlue will conduct in-orbit testing, and expects to offer service to its customers via the WildBlue-1 satellite in January 2007. WildBlue owns a lifetime lease on Anik F2's Ka-band payload over the U.S. and will continue to use that capacity as well.
WildBlue also announced it has contracted with Andrew Corporation to build two new spot beam gateways and augment the existing U.S. gateways that WildBlue currently utilizes. In addition, the company has exercised an agreement with Viasat to deliver the equipment necessary to serve the added customers in the additional gateways.
