Viasat’s new broadband satellite could be a total loss

This artist's illustration of the ViaSat-3 Americas satellites shows the spacecraft as it would appear with its large reflector antenna fully deployed.
Enlarge / This artist’s illustration of the ViaSat-3 Americas satellites shows the spacecraft as it would appear with its large reflector antenna fully deployed.

A new Viasat communications satellite launched in April has been crippled by a problem when unfurling its huge mesh antenna. The problem jeopardizes Viasat’s much-needed refresh to its space-based Internet network that would let it better compete with newer broadband offerings from companies like SpaceX and OneWeb.

Viasat confirmed the antenna problem Wednesday after it was first reported by Space Intel Report. The satellite in question is named ViaSat-3 Americas, and it launched on April 30 as the primary payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The satellite is one of the most powerful commercial spacecraft ever built, with two solar array wings as wide as a Boeing 767 jetliner capable of generating more than 30 kilowatts of electricity. The solar panels deployed soon after the spacecraft arrived in orbit, and the next step was to unfurl a large reflector to bounce Internet signals between the ground and transmitters and receivers on board the main body of the satellite.

That’s when ground controllers ran into trouble. An “unexpected event” occurred during the deployment of the reflector that may “materially impact” the performance of the satellite, Viasat said.

“We’re disappointed by the recent developments,” Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of Viasat, said in a statement. “We’re working closely with the reflector’s manufacturer to try to resolve the issue.”

The ViaSat-3 Americas spacecraft remains in contact with ground controllers as they attempt to troubleshoot the problem. An industry source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Ars there was very little chance that ground teams would be able to fix the satellite’s antenna and fully recover the mission.

If Viasat declares it a total loss, the ViaSat-3 Americas satellite is insured for $420 million. That would be the largest known insurance claim for the loss of a satellite. But a person familiar with the space insurance market said the $420 million claim would not cover the entire cost of the mission. The San Diego Union-Tribune has reported the ViaSat-3 Americas mission cost about $700 million, leaving Viasat on the hook for the difference.

The space insurance official told Ars such a claim would be “disruptive” to the industry and may even trigger some underwriters to leave the space market.

Northrop Grumman's mesh-like satellite antenna, similar to but smaller than the reflector on the ViaSat-3 Americas spacecraft.
Enlarge / Northrop Grumman’s mesh-like satellite antenna, similar to but smaller than the reflector on the ViaSat-3 Americas spacecraft.

The mesh-like reflector antenna on the ViaSat-3 Americas satellite is made of reinforced polymers, graphite, and carbon fiber, with fine gold-plated wire woven into the structure to add flexibility and reduce weight. During launch, the antenna folded up against the spacecraft to fit inside the rocket’s payload shroud.

The spacecraft was built by Boeing, with a communications payload developed internally by Viasat. The reflector was supplied by Northrop Grumman’s Astro Aerospace, said Dave Ryan, Viasat’s president of space and commercial networks, in an interview before the launch in April.

Ryan said the deployment of the antenna was expected to take “literally days.” The reflector is attached to a boom 80 to 90 feet (about 25 meters) long, a larger derivative of the mid-booms that aided the deployment of the sunshade on the James Webb Space Telescope. Speaking before the launch, Viasat officials would not disclose the exact specifications of the circular parabolic antenna but said it was one of the largest structures of its kind ever flown in space.

The reflector is required to focus signals from the satellite onto a small location on the ground. It’s critical to enabling the satellite to reach thousands of users at once, with a total throughput of more than a terabit per second over its 15-year design life.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954185




Kaspersky vede all’orizzonte un nuovo WannaCry


Kaspersky ha reso disponibile un nuovo documento che sintetizza i risultati dell’analisi dei suoi ricercatori e le previsioni per il prossimo anno nel panorama delle Advanced Persistent Threat (Apt).

Le tensioni geopolitiche crescenti nel corso dell’ultimo anno contribuiscono in modo determinante a definire le previsioni per i prossimi dodici mesi.

I ricercatori dell’azienda hanno monitorato oltre 900 gruppi e campagne Apt per individuare le tendenze più interessanti e le novità attese per il prossimo futuro.

La prima analisi offerta è di tipo statistico: secondo la ricerca, le epidemie informatiche più gravi si verificano ogni sei/sette anni. Inoltre, sembra che gli attori che lavorano sugli attacchi di questo genere siano in possesso di almeno un exploit adatto a organizzare una campagna su vasta scala.

Le tensioni globali, inoltre, aumentano notevolmente la possibilità che si verifichi un attacco di tipo hack&leak, ossia un’esfiltrazione di dati riservati da rendere poi pubblici per screditare una parte nemica o minare la coesione sociale.

Droni come veicolo per attacchi di prossimità

Un altro scenario interessante è l’utilizzo dei droni come veicolo per avvicinarsi fisicamente al bersaglio, al fine per esempio di raccogliere informazioni sull’handshake alle reti Wi-Fi.

Un altro scenario in cui i piccoli velivoli comandati a distanza potrebbero essere sfruttati è la “semina” di pendrive Usb, con l’obbiettivo che qualcuno le raccolga e le colleghi a un computer.

La ricerca di Kaspersky segnala poi molte altre possibili tendenze: è previsto l’aumento degli attacchi dirompenti, che potrebbero avere come obbiettivo sia la pubblica amministrazione sia le aziende più note e simboliche.

È anche lecito attendersi una maggiore attenzione nei confronti dei server di posta elettronica, che contengono una grande quantità di informazioni; secondo Kaspersky, il 2023 sarà l’anno degli zero-day per tutti i principali software dedicati alla gestione delle email.

Attacchi alle tecnologie satellitari

L’attacco a Viasat ha dimostrato come le tecnologie satellitari possano diventare un bersaglio; questa tipologia di minacce è destinata a crescere nei prossimi mesi, anche in virtù dell’importanza strategica degli strumenti basati sui satelliti.

L’ultima previsione di Kaspersky è il graduale abbandono di CobaltStrike, uno strumento che ha avuto così tanto successo da essere ormai ben conosciuto anche dai responsabili della sicurezza informatica; per questo motivo, i ricercatori si aspettano una migrazione verso altri strumenti, pubblici oppure sviluppati internamente.

Ivan Kwiatkowski, Senior Security Researcher di Kaspersky

Ivan Kwiatkowski, Senior Security Researcher di Kaspersky, ha commentato: “Il 2022 ha visto grandi cambiamenti nel contesto geopolitico mondiale e ha inaugurato una nuova era di instabilità.

Una parte delle nostre previsioni si concentra su come questa instabilità si tradurrà in attività informatiche dannose, mentre altre riflettono la nostra visione di quali nuovi vettori saranno esplorati dagli attaccanti.

Una migliore preparazione significa una maggiore resistenza e ci auguriamo che le nostre previsioni consentano ai difensori di rafforzare i propri sistemi e respingere gli attacchi informatici in modo più efficace”.

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https://www.securityinfo.it/2022/11/18/kaspersky-vede-allorizzonte-un-nuovo-wannacry/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kaspersky-vede-allorizzonte-un-nuovo-wannacry




Dish and Viasat’s fight against Starlink satellite deployment fails in court

Illustration of a stamp that prints the word
Getty Images | Bet_Noire

Dish Network and Viasat lost their attempt to block one of the key approvals Starlink received from the Federal Communications Commission. On Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the Viasat and Dish protests in a ruling that upheld the FCC decision.

Dish and Viasat sued the FCC after the commission’s April 2021 decision to let SpaceX fly 2,824 of its Starlink satellites at a lower altitude than originally planned, in the 540-570 km range instead of 1,110-1,325 km. The FCC rejected protests from satellite competitors while agreeing with SpaceX that the altitude change would improve broadband speed and latency while making it easier to minimize orbital debris.

A panel of three DC Circuit judges heard the appeal and unanimously sided with the FCC and SpaceX, which was an intervenor in the case on the FCC’s behalf. “Dish argued that the proposed changes would interfere with its GSO [geostationary orbit] satellite television service,” the judges wrote. “Another competitor, Viasat, Inc., jointly objected with an environmental organization calling itself The Balance Group. They argued that NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act] required the FCC to prepare an environmental assessment before granting the modification.”

Dish claimed the FCC did not adequately consider the risk of signal interference, but the judges rejected that argument on the merits. Judges denied The Balance Group’s appeal, saying the group lacked standing as it failed to adequately explain its operations or membership. They rejected Viasat’s appeal because the company’s theory for why it was injured by the FCC decision is “much too speculative” and “does not fall within the zone of interests protected by NEPA.”

In summary, judges found that the FCC “adequately explained its conclusion that the modification of SpaceX’s license would not interfere with Dish’s satellites, and there is no proper party to pursue the NEPA claim.” The same court in July 2021 rejected Viasat’s motion for a preliminary injunction that would have halted Starlink satellite launches while litigation continued. The case was argued in December 2021, and the court’s opinion was filed by Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas.

The losing parties could ask the DC Circuit appeals court to rehear the case in front of all the court’s judges or file a petition with the Supreme Court. But either avenue would probably be a long shot.

Why Dish lost

Dish’s first argument is “that the FCC unreasonably refused to consider expert reports claiming that SpaceX’s proposed changes would interfere with Dish’s GSO satellites. But the reports use a different method for assessing interference than what binding regulations require,” the ruling said.

Contrary to Dish’s claims, the FCC considered the possibility of interference and found that the Starlink altitude change “will not increase interference to GSO satellite systems,” the ruling said. The FCC “applied the correct legal standard in making that finding based on a certified compliance with ITU [International Telecommunication Union] power limits.”

Judges said they also rejected Dish’s argument that “the FCC unreasonably waived the requirement of a favorable ITU finding, thus allowing SpaceX to proceed based on software validation alone.” The FCC had good cause to make that decision, the ruling said:

When the International Bureau first granted the waiver, it determined that an ITU backlog would significantly delay the start of operations even though SpaceX had already certified compliance with ITU power limits using ITU-approved software. We have held that “harm resulting from delay” can be good cause for a waiver. Here, the [FCC’s International] Bureau reasonably granted a waiver to avoid long delays in the provision of Internet service to Americans who remain “totally unserved by other broadband solutions.” And it reasonably concluded that the certification of compliance would provide some assurance of no harmful interference.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1876713




SpaceX and Viasat fight over whether Starlink can meet FCC speed obligations

A Starlink satellite dish on the roof of a house.
Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish.

Over a year and a half after tentatively winning $886 million in broadband funding from the government’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), SpaceX is still trying to get paid by the Federal Communications Commission. One problem for Starlink—though not the only problem—is a series of objections from satellite company Viasat, which says Starlink lacks the capacity and speed to meet FCC obligations.

In a new FCC filing, SpaceX denounced Viasat’s “misguided campaign” against the Starlink funding. “Viasat is transparently attempting to have the Commission impede competition at all costs to protect its legacy technology,” SpaceX told the FCC. The new SpaceX filing was submitted on Friday and posted to the FCC’s website Monday, as pointed out by Light Reading.

But SpaceX might have struggled to get its funding even if Viasat never objected. Starlink was tentatively awarded $886 million in December 2020 by the FCC during the final weeks of Chairman Ajit Pai’s tenure. Consumer advocacy group Free Press accused Pai of “subsidiz[ing] broadband for the rich,” pointing out that Starlink was awarded money in urban areas including locations at or adjacent to major airports.

Starlink service isn’t geographically restricted in the same way as wireline networks, but the RDOF and other programs require ISPs to bid on specific census blocks. Starlink won bids covering 642,925 homes and businesses in 35 states.

In addition to rural areas, SpaceX won “the right to serve a large number of very urban areas that the FCC’s broken system deemed eligible for awards,” Free Press said. A design flaw in the FCC’s mapping system made it possible to bid on subsidies in census blocks that were “surrounded on all sides by fiber.”

Pai’s FCC auction mismanaged

That RDOF auction was apparently mismanaged by Pai, as Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced in July 2021 that the agency must “clean up issues with the program’s design originating from its adoption in 2020.” The FCC cited “complaints that the program was poised to fund broadband to parking lots and well-served urban areas.”

Rosenworcel’s office sent letters to dozens of winning bidders, suggesting that they voluntarily give up portions of their funding. SpaceX was one of the auction’s biggest winners, and Rosenworcel’s FCC asked the company to give up funding in about 6 percent of the 113,900 census blocks where SpaceX tentatively won FCC grants.

The FCC letters to SpaceX and other ISPs pointed to concerns “that certain areas included in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction are already served by one or more service providers that offer 25/3Mbps broadband service or otherwise raise significant concerns about wasteful spending, such as parking lots and international airports.”

SpaceX didn’t agree to give up any funding and is apparently still trying to get the full amount. While the FCC review of SpaceX’s funding is ongoing, the commission has periodically released RDOF money to various other ISPs over the past year. The FCC also recently proposed $4.3 million in fines against 73 ISPs for defaulting on their bids.

Pai’s auction also awarded $1.32 billion to a Las Vegas company called LTD Broadband to serve 528,088 locations in 15 states. But LTD subsequently “missed filing deadlines and failed to secure regulatory approvals needed to receive the money,” The Wall Street Journal wrote.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1871281




US and its allies say Russia waged cyberattack that took out satellite network

Cartoon padlock and broken glass superimposed on a Russian flag.

The US and European Union on Tuesday said Russia was responsible for a cyberattack in February that crippled a satellite network in Ukraine and neighboring countries, disrupting communications and a wind farm used to generate electricity.

The February 24 attack unleashed wiper malware that destroyed thousands of satellite modems used by customers of communications company Viasat. A month later, security firm SentinelOne said an analysis of the wiper malware used in the attack shared multiple technical similarities to VPNFilter, a piece of malware discovered on more than 500,000 home and small office modems in 2018. Multiple US government agencies attributed VPNFilter to Russian state threat actors.

Tens of thousands of modems taken out by AcidRain

“Today, in support of the European Union and other partners, the United States is sharing publicly its assessment that Russia launched cyber attacks in late February against commercial satellite communications networks to disrupt Ukrainian command and control during the invasion, and those actions had spillover impacts into other European countries,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a statement. “The activity disabled very small aperture terminals in Ukraine and across Europe. This includes tens of thousands of terminals outside of Ukraine that, among other things, support wind turbines and provide Internet services to private citizens.”

AcidRain, the name of the wiper analyzed by SentinelOne, is a previously unknown piece of malware. Consisting of an executable file for the MIPS hardware in Viasat modems, AcidRain is the seventh distinct piece of wiper malware associated with Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Wipers destroy data on hard drives in a way that can’t be reversed. In most cases, they render devices or entire networks completely unusable.

SentinelOne researchers said they found “non-trivial” but ultimately “inconclusive” developmental similarities between AcidRain and “dstr,” the name of a wiper module in VPNFilter. The resemblances included a 55 percent code similarity as measured by a tool known as TLSH, identical section header strings tables, and the “storing of the previous syscall number to a global location before a new syscall.”

Viasat officials said at the time that the SentinelOne analysis and findings were consistent with the outcome of their own investigation.

One of the first signs of the hack occurred when more than 5,800 wind turbines belonging to the German energy company Enercon were knocked offline. The outage didn’t stop the turbines from spinning, but it prevented engineers from remotely resetting them. Enercon has since managed to get most of the affected turbines back online and replace the satellite modems.

“The cyberattack took place one hour before Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 thus facilitating the military aggression,” EU officials wrote in an official statement. “This cyberattack had a significant impact causing indiscriminate communication outages and disruptions across several public authorities, businesses and users in Ukraine, as well as affecting several EU Member States.”

In a separate statement, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: “This is clear and shocking evidence of a deliberate and malicious attack by Russia against Ukraine which had significant consequences on ordinary people and businesses in Ukraine and across Europe.”

Repeat cyber offender

The cyberattack was one of many Russia has carried out against Ukraine over the past eight years. In 2015 and again in 2016, hackers working for the Kremlin caused electricity blackouts that left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without heat during one of the coldest months.

Starting around January 2022, in the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of its neighboring country, Russia unleashed a host of other cyberattacks against Ukrainian targets, including a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks, website defacements, and wiper attacks.

Besides the two attacks on Ukrainian electricity infrastructure, evidence shows Russia is also responsible for NotPetya, another disk wiper that was released in Ukraine and later spread around the world, where it caused an estimated $10 billion in damage. In 2018, the US sanctioned Russia for the NotPetya attack and interference in the 2016 election.

Critics have long said that the US and its allies didn’t do enough to punish Russia for NotPetya or the 2015 or 2016 attacks on Ukraine, which remain the only known real-world hacks to knock out electricity.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1853379




Judges reject Viasat’s plea to stop SpaceX Starlink satellite launches

60 of SpaceX's broadband satellites stacked before launch.
Enlarge / 60 Starlink satellites stacked for launch at SpaceX facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX can keep launching broadband satellites despite a lawsuit filed by Viasat, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Viasat sued the Federal Communications Commission in May and asked judges for a stay that would halt SpaceX’s ongoing launches of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that power Starlink Internet service. To get a stay, Viasat had to show that it is likely to win its lawsuit alleging that the FCC improperly approved the satellite launches.

A three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was not persuaded, saying in a short order that “Viasat has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review.” The judges did grant a motion to expedite the appeal, however, so the case should move faster than normal.

Viasat fears Starlink competition

Viasat is worried that its slower Internet service delivered from geostationary satellites will lose customers once Starlink is out of beta and more widely available. Viasat has some LEO-satellite plans but nothing close to the thousands of satellites that SpaceX is launching or the 1,500 or so SpaceX already has in operation.

Viasat alleged that the FCC did not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it approved SpaceX satellite launches because the commission “refused to conduct any environmental assessment.” Viasat told the DC Circuit court that SpaceX launches should be halted because of potential environmental harms when satellites are taken out of orbit; light pollution that alters the night sky; orbital debriscollision risks that may affect Viasat; and because “Viasat will suffer unwarranted competitive injury.”

“This court is likely to vacate the [FCC] order and direct the commission to conduct at least some NEPA review of Starlink,” Viasat wrote. “Any [SpaceX] launches should occur after that review, not before. This court should stay the order pending its review.”

Viasat argued that a stay won’t harm SpaceX much if the FCC order is ultimately upheld. “If this court upholds the commission’s NEPA ruling, the only effect of the stay would be to delay SpaceX’s ability to launch satellites pursuant to the [FCC] order by some number of months,” Viasat wrote.

Viasat’s limited low Earth plans

Viasat explained its financial concerns by writing that SpaceX “intends to use its environmentally irresponsible constellation to extend its reach geographically and directly compete with Viasat. The rate at which SpaceX is launching satellites makes both the extent and risk of harm during this appeal particularly high.”

Viasat said it “operates at least one satellite at the same altitude as Starlink” and that it has a “contract with the Department of Defense to operate a high-value LEO satellite in the same orbital range as the Starlink satellites, which it intends to launch in the next six to twelve months.” Viasat alleged that “failed SpaceX satellites and debris from a collision involving a SpaceX satellite can damage, disable, or destroy Viasat’s satellites.”

Dish Network is also fighting SpaceX’s FCC approval, and Dish’s case was consolidated with Viasat’s appeal. The judges set an August 6 deadline for Viasat and Dish to file opening briefs. The FCC will have until September 21, and SpaceX will have a deadline of September 28. Dish and Viasat will have until October 12 to file replies, and final briefs are due October 26. Oral arguments will follow “on the first appropriate date” after briefs.

FCC defends SpaceX license

The FCC and SpaceX last month filed briefs opposing Viasat’s motion for a stay. The FCC told judges that it “closely examined and reasonably rejected Viasat’s claims… As to each category of alleged environmental impact, the Commission considered the alleged effect in detail and found insufficient evidence that SpaceX’s license modification… requires further review.”

The FCC has given SpaceX several approvals of satellite launches. In 2018, the FCC approved 4,408 satellites at altitudes of 1,100-1,300 km. In 2019, the agency granted a license modification that cut the orbital altitude of 1,584 of those satellites in half.

The FCC order that Viasat challenged was another license modification granted in April 2021 that lowered the altitude of the remaining 2,824 satellites to 540-570 km. The FCC said in its court brief that the license change fell into a category “of actions that normally do not have a significant effect on the human environment.” Under this “categorical exclusion,” a review is not required by NEPA except in “extraordinary circumstances” in which there may be “significant environmental impact,” the FCC said.

The FCC did require SpaceX to explain how it will prevent orbital debris, collisions in space, and casualties upon satellite reentry. The FCC also imposed conditions on the license.

“SpaceX’s orbital debris mitigation plan explained that the satellites are capable of maneuvering to avoid collisions and that the lower altitude helps minimize debris by ensuring satellites more quickly descend into the atmosphere and are destroyed at the end of their useful lives,” the FCC told judges. “SpaceX also addressed the potential casualty risk resulting from portions of satellites surviving reentry by explaining that SpaceX had revised the design of all but the initial 75 satellites so that ‘no components of… the satellite will survive atmospheric re-entry, reducing casualty risk to zero.'” The FCC said it “granted the modification with conditions including compliance with current and future orbital debris rules.”

SpaceX also has FCC approval for another 7,500 satellites with even lower orbits.

FCC and SpaceX in sync

The FCC had more arguments against Viasat’s motion, telling judges that Viasat “relies on speculative assertions of primarily economic harm that do not demonstrate a likelihood that Viasat has standing, much less show irreparable injury justifying the extraordinary remedy of a stay pending appeal.” Halting the satellite launches would create harm “to SpaceX and to the public interest in advancing broadband satellite service to remote or underserved areas of the United States,” the FCC said.

SpaceX’s filing alleged that Viasat made a “transparent bid to co-opt the National Environmental Policy Act and the procedure for extraordinary stay relief as weapons of commercial warfare,” adding:

Viasat’s newfound environmentalism is belied by its actions at every turn. Viasat failed to raise any environmental concerns in connection with any other satellite authorization, including SpaceX’s authorization to operate Starlink satellites at a different altitude and its prior request (nearly identical to the one at issue here) to lower many of those satellites. To the contrary, Viasat—a non-US licensee that has previously sought to escape Commission regulation altogether—ultimately relies on “competitive harm” to support its stay request. But stifling competition and protecting profits is not what NEPA is about.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1782438




No-fiber zone: FCC funds 25Mbps, data-capped satellite in rural areas

Illustration of a broadband satellite in space.
Enlarge / Viasat-2, a satellite launched by Viasat in 2017.

The Federal Communications Commission is giving $87.1 million in rural-broadband funding to satellite operator Viasat to help the company lower prices and raise data caps.

The FCC’s Connect America Fund generally pays ISPs to expand their networks into rural areas that lack decent home Internet access. Viasat’s satellite service already provides coverage of 98 percent of the US population in 50 states, so it doesn’t need government funding to expand its network the same way that wireline operators do. But Viasat will use the money to offer Internet service “at lower cost to consumers, while also permitting higher usage allowances, than it typically provides in areas where it is not receiving Connect America Fund support,” the FCC said in its announcement yesterday.

Viasat’s $87.1 million is to be used over the next 10 years “to offer service to more than 121,700 remote and rural homes and businesses in 17 states.” Viasat must provide speeds of at least 25Mbps for downloads and 3Mbps for uploads.

While the funding for Viasat could certainly improve access for some people, the project helps illustrate how dire the broadband shortage is in rural parts of many states. Viasat’s service is generally a last-ditch option for people in areas where there’s no fiber or cable and where DSL isn’t good enough to provide a reasonably fast and stable connection. Viasat customers have to pay high prices for slow speeds and onerous data limits.

Future services relying on low-Earth-orbit satellites from companies such as SpaceX and OneWeb could dramatically boost speeds and data caps while lowering latency. But Viasat service still relies on satellites in geostationary orbits about 22,000 miles above the planet and suffer from latency of nearly 600ms, much worse than the 10ms to 20ms from fiber services (as measured in customer homes by the FCC in September 2017). Viasat’s service is classified by the FCC’s Connect America Fund as “high latency,” which is less than or equal to 750ms.

The Connect America Fund is paid for by Americans through fees on their phone bills.

Prices and data caps not revealed

A Viasat spokesperson would not tell us what prices and data caps will be applied to the company’s FCC-subsidized plans. Viasat said it will provide the required 25Mbps service “along with an evolving usage allowance, and at FCC-defined prices, to certain areas, where we will be subject to a new range of federal and state regulations.”

The materials released by the FCC yesterday don’t provide price and data-cap information, either. We contacted the FCC and will update this article if we get any answers.

Viasat’s current prices and data allotments are pretty bad, so hopefully there will be a significant improvement. Plans and pricing vary by ZIP code; offers listed on BroadbandNow include $50 a month for download speeds of up to 12Mbps and only 12GB of “priority data” each month. The price rises after a two-year contract expires.

“Once priority data is used up, speeds will be reduced to up to 1 to 5Mbps during the day and possibly below 1Mbps after 5pm,” BroadbandNow’s summary says. Customers can use data without affecting the limit between 3am and 6am.

Other plans include $75 a month for speeds of 12Mbps and 25GB of priority data; $100 a month for 12Mbps and 50GB; and $150 a month for 25Mbps and “unlimited” data. Even on the so-called unlimited plan, speeds “may be prioritized behind other customers during network congestion” after you use 100GB in a month. Because of these onerous limits, Viasat lowers streaming video quality to reduce data usage. Viasat says it provides speeds of up to 100Mbps but only “in select areas.”

Viasat also charges installation fees, a $10-per-month equipment lease fee, and taxes and surcharges. Viasat offers a 2-year price lock, but this does not apply to the taxes and surcharges. In order to avoid signing a 2-year contract, you have to pay a $300 “No Long-Term Contract” fee.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1634071