Viasat

Viasat, founded back in 1986 in a bedroom-by-the-sea in Carlsbad, California, somehow managed to go from selling signal-noise widgets to the U.S. Army to becoming a mega satellite broadband player. They’ve always had that “defense nerds who tinker and then make billions” vibe, it’s like if your basement hobby accidentally turned into six billion dollars in orbit.

They made headlines in 2011 with ViaSat‑1, a geostationary beast that broke the Guinness record for highest satellite capacity, over 140 Gb/s, which was basically “more than the rest of North America put together.” If bragging rights were currency, they were rolling in it.

Then ViaSat‑2 launched in 2017. It outperformed its predecessor and most rivals with about 300 Gb/s, pushing limits for coverage from North America to the Atlantic, reaching airlines and ships on the way. If you’ve streamed something at 30,000 feet, you probably have these guys to thank for at least part of the ride.

Their next move on the chessboard was ViaSat‑3: a global trio of GEO satellites each capable of over one terabit per second. Yeah, you read that right. Each. If you’re not already imagining a megabit fetishist rejoicing, maybe the scale of ambition isn’t quite sinking in yet.

On top of that they took out Inmarsat for $7.3 billion in 2021, folding in all that mobile satcom empire energy, your marine Wi‑Fi, airline cabins, and obscure government channels now got tagged with the Viasat logo. A hostile takeover disguised as industry consolidation? Or a power move to say “we’re still relevant.” Your guess is as good as theirs.

But just to keep things spicy, in 2022, they got hit by a cyberattack, spoiler: it wasn’t their satellites, it was their ground modems on KA‑SAT that took the hit. Thousands of customers, including wind farms and maybe even that awkward NATO base in rural Europe, lost connectivity. Rumor has it the malware was tied to Russia. Great timing, right when the world started caring about satellite security.

And here’s the latest: an activist investor is now both whispering and shouting that Viasat should split its broadband and defense units into different companies. They’re saying it could unlock up to $11 billion in value, just sitting there, apparently stuck in a corporate blob. Viasat’s like “we’re reviewing,” while investors are elbowing each other for popcorn.

So there you have it, Viasat is the original satellite broadband wrangler turned space cowboy turned merger magnet turned potential mid-life-refactoring saga. It’s that guy at the bar who swears they used to fly rockets out of their garage, only now they own half the sky, and someone just told them they’re too diverse to focus, so maybe they should split up.