The most recent example is Eutelsat's KA-SAT, a Ka-band satellite launched last December that packs 70 Gbps of capacity and will start commercial services later this year. Eutelsat has already signed deals with French ISP Sat2Way and the UK's Avonline to sell KA-SAT's "TooWay" services in their respective markets with promised downlink speeds of 10 Mbps and uplink speed of 4 Mbps.
ViaSat aims to launch its own HTS bird (ViaSat-1) for North America in the middle of this year, with a total capacity of 130 Gbps.
A key feature of next-gen HTS is lower bandwidth costs, achieved partly by using Ka-band spot beams with more efficient frequency reuse, and partly by the sheer amount of bandwidth provided. ViaSat claims that ViaSat-1's cost-per-GB will be a fraction of current Ka-band bandwidth costs.
Meanwhile, the VSAT broadband market has emerged from the 2009 global economic recession in reasonably good shape and chalked up solid growth in its installed base, especially in the last quarter or two of 2010, says NSR. As economic conditions improve - which in turn should strengthen capital spending from enterprises and governments - and as more satellite capacity becomes available in key markets, the sector should see a peak in VSAT deployments from now to 2013.
"The VSAT industry could see its installed and operational base increase by over 750,000 sites in the coming ten years," said French.
In India the banking sector is being touted by satellite broadband operator Hughes Communications India as hot growth area for VSAT data services. Hughes - which already has 75,000 VSAT sites in the country - plans to deploy another 15,000 sites for banks in 2011 and 2012, and expects to see 25-30% revenue growth from the sector in the next three to five years, according to a report from PTI (Press Trust of India) in April.